by Amber Stuart
“Well, there you go. You didn’t need to know how, you simply needed the motivation to do it, and you had it.” Jackson looked so smug, I wanted to hit him. All right, I wanted to hit him for a lot of reasons, but especially now.
“No, I would have never chosen this! I didn’t bring her back, I just changed us both!”
“Lottie, listen to me, what’s done is done.” Jackson had his confession as far as he was concerned, and he continued as if her outburst was just a nuisance, like a gnat buzzing around his head. I half expected him to reach up and try to swat her away. “You’ve created quite the problem for all of us, and now…”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“And now, we will need to decide how to handle this in the best interest of our community.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I interjected.
If Lottie were the annoying gnat, I was simply the open window through which it had flown in.
Jackson didn’t even bother to look at me. “It won’t concern you, Herr Dietrich.”
I gritted my teeth. His condescending attitude was aggravating enough; the Herr Dietrich part was simply fucking stupid. “Of course it concerns me. Anything that concerns her concerns me.”
Jackson rolled his eyes – he actually rolled his fucking eyes at me – and passed a glance in my direction. “She needs to talk to someone who can judge if this fiasco is salvageable. If it is, we can help her. It won’t be easy, but we can help her to remove most, if not all, of these memories.” He made a face when he said memories, like it tasted acrid and bitter.
“And what if he thinks I’m not… salvageable?” Her voice was low now, quiet, raspy. Her anger had evaporated. There was nothing left but fear.
“Then we can’t help you, Lottie. Not anymore. Not ever again. None of us. Even Lydia,” he offered Lydia one of his warmer, more sincere, and this time, genuinely sympathetic smiles, “will have to leave you.”
“So I have to choose?” Lottie sank back on the couch between Lydia and me. My stomach started rolling again.
“No. You don’t get to choose. You already made your choice when you created this...” Jackson sighed, a heavy sigh, a very real reminder that for some reason, the man on the phone yesterday had been livid over this discovery. “Oh, Lottie. Do you even know what you’ve done?”
Lottie slowly shook her head. Lydia had reached over and taken her other hand. Lottie was squeezing it so tightly, her knuckles were blanched, the tendons in her hand stretched tightly as she held onto the only anchor she had left to her old life. Trying to separate her from Lydia seemed as cruel and merciless as the universe ripping Lottie out of my life. Lydia wouldn’t be taken from her. I couldn’t let that happen.
Eric was watching them, too, and because I knew him so well, I knew this announcement had cracked that aloof façade he had constructed, but he was still the owner of this room; this was still his show even though he and I were the only ones who understood it.
Tears had streaked Lydia’s cheeks and were falling onto her lap; she was trying not to devolve into hysterics, not when Lottie needed her. She had seemed so weak, so ineffectual and insipid the night I met her, and I had left with the impression of Lydia as the puppy who followed Lottie around wherever she went, even across time and space, yelping happily at her feet, but always the innocent little plaything of a stronger, more dominant force.
But I was always judging too quickly, assuming people were so one-dimensional. Lydia was good and sweet and naïve, but she was also resilient, a bulwark for Lottie to lean on when she needed her, and right now, Lottie needed that rampart quite literally. She had leaned her face into Lydia’s shoulder, hiding from the second Jabberwocky to fly into this room in less than a week.
“Well,” Jackson said standing up, and for the second day in a row, David took it as his cue to head toward the door, “I don’t know if I’ll be seeing you again, but good luck.” And within seconds they were gone.
Lottie waited until the sounds of their footsteps had faded from the walkway before letting herself cry. Lydia smoothed her hair and gently, slowly, rocked her, like an injured child whose scraped knees could be healed by the power of her mother’s love. And as for me: I was trying desperately not to throw up.
Eric finally moved across the room to lock the door and motioned for me to join him at the table. I didn’t hesitate; I felt like I was infringing on this private moment between two terrified and heartbroken friends, two friends whose bond had been so strong that they had risked their lives to stay together on a journey only one had wanted to take. But if Jackson were telling the truth, then she was going to lose one of us. If whatever they wanted to do to her worked, she may not remember me. But she would always remember Lydia. My stomach rolled again.
“Jesus Christ,” Eric muttered.
I nodded. “We can hide them both,” I suggested.
“Yeah, but what about you?”
I watched them for a few moments before answering. “I’ll know how to find her.”
“Dietrich, it won’t be the same, you won’t be…”
But I already knew what it would mean. Hiding them so they could be together would mean Lottie and I could never be together.
“I know. But I’ll also know she’s alive, and hopefully, happy. That’s more than I ever had any right to ask for anyway.”
Eric put his head down in his hands. “I need a fucking drink.”
I glanced back at Lottie and Lydia, still holding onto each other, crying in each other’s arms, their hearts breaking with a pain I understood perfectly well, then in Russian, told Eric, “I need to get to Waco.”
I would have left later that day, but when Eric and I got up to leave, Lottie panicked. She begged me to stay with her and wouldn’t even go in to work. She called in sick, and Lydia somehow managed to pull herself together to still work her shift. Lottie insisted Eric borrow her car and that he could do whatever he wanted, but she thanked him so many times for coming to Baton Rouge in the first place, that we both knew what she was really doing: it was like being told you have a few days left to live. If there was a chance she wasn’t going to remember me, she suddenly didn’t want to let me go.
So we spent the entire afternoon lying on the sofa watching movies. She found Men in Black on Netflix and even though I groaned and tried to persuade her to watch something with more substance and fewer aliens, she was persistent, and as always, I gave in easily. And when it was over, I suggested we watch Independence Day. Somehow, as ironic as it was considering extraterrestrials and space travel were the last things I wanted to think about, the entire day turned into a marathon of watching movies about just that.
We watched Spaceballs – because, really, what movie marathon is complete without a Mel Brooks film? – and we even found the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We ordered pizza for supper and drank beer and by midnight, Lottie had fallen asleep against my arm during the remake of War of the Worlds. And as I had done so many times before, I lifted her carefully, slowly so I wouldn’t wake her, and carried her to bed. As I turned to leave, Lottie stopped me.
“Dietrich?” Her eyes were wide, watching me. “Will you stay with me?”
My mouth was dry, and I suddenly felt nervous, like I was seventeen again. I certainly couldn’t tell her that part of me was still utterly, completely, hopelessly confused as to whether or not making out on the sofa the day before had been cheating on Lottie – my Lottie – or if it didn’t matter because wasn’t this my Lottie? She was, wasn’t she?
She was different now, but the same, and when I had kissed her, that was Lottie kissing me back. But for all those moments that reminded me she isn’t the same woman anymore, although she had every quality I had fallen in love with, there were all these other attributes that were new, interesting, mysterious and, sometimes, exciting, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t ok to feel that way.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pushed a strand o
f hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She was so beautiful, so perfect. My Lottie. “I’ll stay, but just to sleep.”
Lottie smiled. “Since when?”
“Since you’ve had an emotionally difficult day and I don’t want you to make any decisions based on what some asshole told you may or may not happen.”
And I don’t know if it’s a good idea for us to sleep together. Can I cheat on my dead fiancée with my not-dead-fiancée-who-is-also-someone-else now?
Lottie’s smile faltered and she rolled onto her back. “It’s going to happen. I can’t stop it. I thought we would have so much time.”
“I know.” I lay down beside her and brushed my fingers through her hair. I could smell the faint scent of pears and honey.
“At first, I thought I wanted my life back. I thought it would be easier, but then I met you, I mean really met you, and I don’t want to forget you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I moved her closer to me and nestled into her neck, that smell, the heat of her body, those loose waves of hair tickling my face. I wanted her. God, I wanted her so badly.
Lottie rolled onto her side again and wrapped an arm around my waist, burying her face against my chest, and breathed deeply. I knew I was playing with fire. This had been a dangerous idea. I should have left. Offered to sleep on the couch. On the floor. I was a better man than this. But that aching longing, that hole that had ripped open in my own personal universe when she had died, was salved; it was calmed by the presence of Lottie and Kyrieana and it was now a burning desire, a passionate hungering that may have been for both of them. I didn’t even know anymore. I only knew that I wanted her. So I stayed.
“I love you,” she whispered, her lips tracing kisses against my neck, finding my lips in a crushing, desperate kiss.
I was already pulling at her shirt, throwing it off and revealing that smooth, creamy skin and the white lace bra underneath. I moved my mouth down to kiss her stomach, her torso, that perfect spot between her breasts. I pulled at the straps and she helped me unhook it, and as I licked her nipple, teasing her, taking it into my mouth, she gasped – a surprise, a revelation – and I remembered.
“Do you want me to stop?” I asked. I knew exactly what Lottie would have wanted; I knew nothing about what Kyrieana wanted.
“No,” she breathed, “don’t, please.” I smiled at her, sat up and took off my shirt and she caught her breath again. “Kyrieana,” I asked, “have you ever… before coming here, had you…”
My mind was twisted into so many different corners; this was Lottie. How many times had we had sex before? And yet I was trying to ask her if she was a virgin? Why hadn’t I stayed on the couch.
“It’s not the same, Dietrich. We’re not the same. And with you, I mean, I remember it, but to feel it.”
She reached for me, pulled herself closer to me again so that she could slide underneath me, and brought my lips down to kiss her again. I couldn’t bring myself to question her anymore. She tugged at the zipper on my jeans and I pulled off her shorts and the rest of our clothes came off, cast aside quickly, as we ravenously ran our hands along each other’s bodies, these bodies that were alive with a lust that could only be born from those years of physical separation, of a love that burned so deeply that even death could not extinguish it.
As I slid into her, she gasped again, wrapping her arms closer around me, tightening as I thrust into her and I moaned with the pure pleasure of feeling Lottie surrounding me again. Lottie’s body responded, her back arched and her fingers dug deeper into my back as I thrust harder and faster, filled with the ecstasy of making love to Lottie. And it was only us then. I was with Lottie. Somehow, impossibly, I was with Lottie again.
She was kissing my neck, my lips, licking my ear and whispering, “Dietrich, don’t leave, please don’t ever leave me, stay here.”
I’m almost positive that it’s a universal truth that the quickest way to get a man to orgasm is to whisper something in his ear. And as my body pulsed with the intense pleasure of those final thrusts, I whispered back, “Ach, Lottie, du bist mein Himmel.”
Afterward, as we lay there together, our bodies still tangled, Lottie running her hand through my hair and I breathing deeply as the strong smell of her encircled me, Lottie finally shifted out from underneath me and lay on her side facing me, looking at me, happy, but serious, determined. “I can be her, Dietrich. Just her. I will try for you.”
And, like that, another layer of this Hell of an afterlife opened up beneath me.
Chapter 11
I wanted to talk to Eric, but I never had the chance. I wanted to tell him what I had done, what Lottie –or Kyrieana – had offered, what she was willing to give up because I had selfishly, stupidly, only cared about resurrecting my dead fiancée and had never considered what it truly meant for her.
Kyrieana wasn’t offering to die for me. I think if she could, she would have done it to make me happy. But instead she would always be there: hidden, silent, forgotten. She had offered to bury herself alive for me. It was worse than death. And I was the biggest asshole on the planet.
I hadn’t known what to say then, and I had only kissed her forehead, told her to sleep now, and she did, lying against me, her arm draped loosely over me and I lay there beside her for a very long time watching her, wondering how I could possibly love someone so much and yet not know them. And of course I thought about her sacrifice.
I had been consumed with finding the woman I had loved, the woman I had lost and buried, and had treated the woman she was now as that same person with a few eccentricities. Because I wanted to believe that was all there was to it: it was Lottie, resurrected, a little changed by time and experience but my Lottie. I knew I was wrong, but I wanted to believe it so badly that I had allowed myself to live in an illusion where Lottie was alive again. And Lottie knew what I was doing. That was the worst part. She knew I was only looking for a ghost and was willing to live in that illusion with me.
In the morning, Lottie was thoughtful, observing me carefully as she sat across the table sipping on her coffee and I tried to explain to her that I had to leave town for a few days but that I would be back as soon as I could, that Eric would stay with her and that she would be safe with him.
There were more thoughts there than I could read; my Lottie trusted me. She knew I would return. She understood whatever I was doing, I was doing for her. But Kyrieana hadn’t forgotten her promise to me the night before and whatever doubts she had, whatever anxiety my sudden departure was causing, was suppressed. She wouldn’t voice it.
And so I had left that morning in a daze of my own making: filled with a hope for a future I thought had been lost, and with the self-loathing for a man who was willing to destroy an innocent person, a good person, to get it.
It would be so easy to disappear with her; to pick somewhere in the world – anywhere – and just go, start all over with her, have the family she had always wanted, have the life we had both planned for. But instead, I decided to go to Waco. I would find out what Jackson had been hiding from her; I would try to save them both.
What else could I do? Of course, I wanted Lottie back. But I reminded myself that she was dead and that future was gone, just a fantasy that would remain an illusion in my mind; that we were dead, and in this afterlife, in this new Hell that I had made for myself, there was only one path to redemption.
Eric wasn’t in his room when I got back to the hotel. I called his phone and got his voicemail. I told him I wanted to leave soon, that he needed to get his ass back here, then showered, repacked the few personal things I had brought with me, having expected this to be a shorter trip than it was turning out to be. Eric finally knocked on my door about an hour later with a colleague of ours.
I let them both in, eyeing Eric curiously. Mark was about Eric’s age, competent, trustworthy, and we had often requested to work with him when we needed extra help - it had been Mark who had helped us with the
transcription - but his presence here was unnerving. Eric had never told me he was coming.
“Check out of here,” Eric said. “There’s a vacant three bedroom in their complex. We signed a short-term lease on it this morning. And take the car Mark drove over in when you go to Waco. Leave your car at the apartment.”
I nodded. What was he even doing here?
“I already packed the car for you,” Eric continued.
I was still waiting for him to get to the part where he explained Mark’s mysterious presence. Lottie had never met Mark. Having a stranger here wasn’t going to help her anxiety about Jackson’s ominous warnings, her promise to me last night, my sudden departure this morning.
Eric was still talking, telling me what he had put in the car I was supposed to be driving to Waco, but I was preoccupied with Mark and finally lost my patience.
“Mark, why are you here?”
Both of them stared at me. Eric took a deep breath. Shit.
“Dietrich, this is… it was one thing when we came looking for a couple of girls that we knew were harmless. I was fine with keeping this between us. But,” he inhaled slowly again, raking a hand through his short brown hair, which made it stand up in spots in a messy, spiky, just rolled out of bed kind of way, “these guys… look, I don’t care where they came from originally. Those bodies are human. Those people are human. We can’t just let them… Jesus, Dietrich, we don’t even know what they’re really planning on doing, but they think they can come here and steal our friends’ bodies and not have to live by our laws?”
“I get that, but it still doesn’t explain why Mark is here.”
“Because if this judge prick shows up while you’re in Waco, I don’t want to be here alone.”
I was too surprised to respond immediately. I had never heard Eric admit that he was scared before. Nothing ever seemed to rattle him. He had been the one who recognized my potential at eighteen and recommended my recruitment, and he had been my mentor as he taught me everything he knew. I soon gained his respect and admiration with how quickly I learned, how adeptly and efficiently I could work under all sorts of conditions. Within a couple of short years, he had become my equal, my friend.