The Risen (Book 4): Courage

by Marie F. Crow

  “Now, is that any way to greet the woman who saved you?” The man asks me, taking steps towards us.

  Hearing the footsteps behind him, Lawless straightens. He gives me one honest look before his face lights with false sincerity. The smile would be convincing if he hadn’t shown me his true thoughts. He turns to the man saying, “We are all grateful you arrived when you did.”

  Leslie snorts, giving her opinion of the topic. It draws a smile from Rhett with slow, deliberate thoughts. With his arms crossed and half leaning on the wall, he leans over to whisper to her and whatever he said causes her breathing to quicken and her face to become frozen with worry. As much as I have hated today, at least I was able to avoid Leslie.

  The man takes note of the interaction and I see him storing it for later use with a glance to his female counterpart.

  “I see there is some tension in the room,” the woman says as she tries to gauge on which side of the room she wants to place her friendship. I don’t blame her. They have just walked into a civil war and there is no peace treaty or Switzerland between our sides anymore. The closest thing we have to that would be Chapel and Paula, but they both have their spines and their thoughts on the matter. They just prefer to not share them until they have to. With the barbs behind Paula’s words, I prefer that, too.

  “Is she going to be okay?” I ask Paula, completely ignoring the new drama that wants to play.

  “Judging by the amount of comebacks she had for the situation a moment ago,” Paula says. “I think she’ll live.”

  Sidestepping from Lawless, I go to my friend and stare at the sleeping pixie. “She was awake?” Her face is slack in slumber and it is odd to see it without her normal mischievous grin. Her lips are missing the scent from her never-ending supply of bubble gum with its pink tint that matches the absent shine of her lip-gloss. I used to tease her when she was eighty and in a nursing home she would be the only one there with neon streaked hair, lip-gloss and using gum as a currency like cigarettes in a prison. I spent days hating her, pushing her away with my demons whispering to me because of my self-loathing. If she doesn’t recover, those will be days that I can never make up for.

  Lawless rests his hands on my shoulders letting his thumb rub the tension that rests there with my thoughts. “Yeah, she asked about you. Told her you were resting off another hero-mode episode.” His voice is light-hearted but my ears also ear the undertone of annoyance.

  “I couldn’t just go and not try to help.”

  “I know,” he tells me and he sounds as tired as he looks. His thumbs press a little firmer into my shoulders and I know that his conversation isn’t over. The strangers standing watching us may have just saved me twice today.

  “Travis and Selma.” Chapel takes up the lulled spaced of the fallen conversation using it to introduce the two who are content to just watch the show.

  “Your friend is going to be fine.” Selma glides towards me. Her body has the lean, well-toned look of someone who has never been idle in life. Her dark hair and matching eyes contradict the sweet smile that never seems to fully leave her lips. It’s her eyes that give me more pause than those red lips. “We just have to pray. God, in His salvation, will allow her to live if it is His will.”

  My thoughts hover somewhere between amusement and irony. I ask her, “You really believe that?”

  “The reason the dead walk is because you, like so many, do not. Don’t you see?” She comes to me, gasping my hands. She is filled with concern over my doubts. It adds a flame to her eyes that glows with her convictions. “We put our faith into science. We worshiped mortals like they were angels. We turned our eyes from the only one who can save us while we spent our words on praises for another. So, He took His eyes from us. He took our comforts away, bringing us to our knees where we should have been all this time. He wants his children back. He wants our love we stole from Him.” Her voice fills with joy with each word that falls from her lips. Her face comes alive with the joy her mind is picturing with her imagined rapture.

  “What naughty children we must be for our glorious Father to punish us so.” Rhett has his own smile and it removes Selma’s.

  She recovers quickly, forcing her face to be pleasant and peaceful. For a moment, with her back to the rest of the room, I saw the woman she is hiding. She turns to Rhett and says, “You have lived a life born from the Devil’s rib. You have walked side-by-side with him for so long that it clouds your heart with bitterness.” She smiles to Rhett with compassion. “That’s why He has led us here. That is why we arrived just when we were needed the most. You sent those souls to heaven and God used them to lead us here. What you saw as smoke, He saw as a beacon. He saw that you believed with some small part of you and now we are here to help guide you home.”

  Home, such a dangerous and deceiving word to behold now. That simple one syllable strokes an emotion across every face when she says it. There is nothing anyone wants more now than a “home”.

  The feeling of it is not lost on Rhett. He pulls his shoulders back and looks from Selma as his jaw works out his emotions with slight movements. When he looks to her again, there is something new in those blue eyes. Something that I had witnessed before when he stood in the snow staring at me from behind the truck and it was gone as fast as it sprung to life. “My GPS works just fine, woman, and it’s pointed south, not north,” Rhett tells her with a relaxed stance that vibrates with his tension.

  “Your maps just haven’t been updated recently.” Selma’s smile is candy-coated, daring Rhett to sample her sweetness. It’s the fact that he doesn’t that says more than any response he may have given her.

  I look to Chapel and as usual he is watching with locked, silent concentration. Chapel doesn’t hear conversation; he sees it. He sees it in a way that makes a person squirm and rethink every word they said in the mountainous valleys of the silence between exchanges. A part of me has come to understand that was one reason J.D. disliked the man so much. Our glorious “father” controlled through fear and it’s hard to strike fear in someone who sees what’s more than just skin deep.

  Paula feels the tension mounting from years of having to harness people under tight reigns. Her “Betty Crocker” is slipping into more of a “Mommy Dearest” personality. The day hasn’t been kind to any of us.

  “Out.” Heavy and threatening, Paula uses one word to disarm any more bombs from exploding today. “Out,” she says again when no one makes the first move. She doesn’t yell or bark her request. It’s more like a mother who has finally found the last moment of sanity. She is so calm that it is more frightening than if she was wielding weapons.

  Like waves being pulled by gravity, each group falls back into its own, departing the room. Our little hybrid of a family pulls back into the room where I awoke with Marxx, the man who now watches Rhett with veiled eyes and thoughts. He places himself between Rhett and Lawless so he can better watch the taller man.

  “What was that?” Marxx asks, swaying so that Rhett cannot look away from him.

  “Nothing,” Rhett shrugs, dismissing the missed mark he normally lands with joyous pride. “I’m tired and didn’t feel like toying with the bitch.”

  Marxx’ eyes roam Rhett’s face, not fully believing him before he looks to Lawless asking, “You tired?”

  I know the real question. I know what Marxx is asking without asking in their double-edged word game. Lawless does, too. “Yeah,” Lawless says settling the debate and backing down both men. “Not all of us got to take a little nap.” With one move, he has placed both men on equal footing of behavior without either having to be directly called out. Both men understand their mistake and both men accept it.

  Chapel places one arm over my shoulder, pulling me to his chest in a false embrace to mask the words he whispers into my ear. “He might just be able to handle it,” he whispers.

  I look to him as walks past me, hiding my reaction and he winks before fully putting his back to me. He leaves the measuring contest to the other
three men as he throws his body onto one of the examining tables to sleep. The blue cushioned bench doesn’t give at all and it sounds as ungraceful as it looked.

  In agreement with Paula’s earlier mood and now Chapel’s need to distance himself, I turn to leave and I’m instantly met with disapproval. “Where are you going?” Lawless’ cold tone twists its way up my spine, paralyzing any movement of my body.

  “We might have had a nap, but we didn’t get a shower,” I call to him over my shoulder. Two can play at the “who’s the biggest slacker” game.

  “She sure is spending a lot of time alone with Marxx here, Law,” Rhett says and I can hear a bench sigh with weight. I can see his smile with his joke without having to look at him.

  “So, let me get this straight. You have no witty comeback when a stranger is questioning your conviction and loyalties, but put you in a room with just us and your Mr. Funny Man suddenly? Wouldn’t that make you the bitch?” I’d like to think my mark was struck, slapping the smile from his face. The problem with Rhett, one smile normally just replaces a different, darker one. I’m not turning around to check. Nope, I’m walking right through these doors and praying the barrier will save my skin and the time lapse from the shower will remove the risk of returning. I have high hopes. It’s a lot like dreams but a lot more gullible.

  “Hey,” Lawless calls to me as we pass through the doorway and the sound of his voice pulls Paula from tending to the wounded that I had not noticed before. Her face shows no welcome and her mood is better accented with her hands resting on her broad hips.

  Lawless lowers his voice to avoid her wrath, but still pulls me to a stop with an unfriendly hand on my arm. “That shit you pulled, it almost cost you your life, again. How many more times until you start to think?”

  “I was thinking.”

  “Don’t even play the martyr here on me. I have zero patience for your hero-act. I tell you to do something, from now on, you do it.” He steps close to me, his eyes bearing down on me and not an ounce of kindness is reflected in their brown depths. “No more bullshit, Helena. You want to kill yourself, use a gun. Don’t place your suicide at someone’s feet.”

  His words chill me. I can feel them as they make their mark like cold liquid sliding down my throat. They settle like rocks into the pit of my stomach and I have to look away from him. “I can’t save you from yourself,” he tells me and his voice holds the pitch of exhausted concern.

  “Never asked you to.” I am raw and I have nothing in me to give him. There is no fight or forgiveness to be asked. I’m just raw with exposed nerves and fatigue.

  “I know,” he says, letting go of my arm with fingertips that linger until the last possible moment.

  Months have passed since we stood at the Welcome Center and I watched the first chasm form between us. As I watch his hand fall from me, I fall back into that moment when I knew our romance was becoming wilted like beautiful flowers that once stood admired and cherished. I have clung to him with needs of being wanted and feeling safe. Those are things of childhood ghosts and now my ghosts are much more demanding of my sanity. I have bigger demons now that whisper to me. I don’t know if either of us is strong enough to battle for what we once were with the scars we have each caused the other, but I want him to be.

  “Come with me?” I shyly ask him so hesitantly that he stiffens in front of me. I look to him to see his mask staring back at me. I watch him roll his shoulders with exaggerated tension as he looks away from me. I know what his answer is going to be before he says it.

  “No,” he says as softly as I asked. “Not this time.” He kisses the top of my forehead, keeping his lips to me while he struggles to control his emotions. “Not this time,” he whispers it still hovering over me, asking for understanding for what he cannot do.

  “You made me a promise, once,” I say to his chest with how close he is holding me.

  “I’ve made you a lot of promises.” He pulls from me, leaving the meaning of what he said balancing on a razor’s edge. I watch him leave me, and only when his back is fully to me, do I have the courage to let the first tear fall.

  I thought I was brave. I thought I was strong. I thought I was saving him, but watching him walk from me, I know now that I was condemning myself. Like a shadow, he was walking with me when the sun was high. Now that darkness is starting to surround me, he is fading into the pitch of it and it’s my fault. What do you say when the reason the ground under your feet is eroding is because of you? What do you say to the mirror when it’s what is staring back at you that is causing your misery? If you go chasing after white rabbits, eventually you will fall from the world you know.

  CHAPTER 13

  The chilled water from overhead flows over my slumped, battered body. It pools in my contours before running freely down my thighs. It swirls in a red tide at my feet from the blood on my skin before draining away. It’s transfixing to watch, with my thoughts a jumbled mess, trying to avoid the obvious.

  Marxx never followed me, leaving me alone to sulk and swim in my self-enforced depression. Perhaps sleep called to him more than the need to be clean. Perhaps, like myself, he didn’t want to be alone with me. Twice now, my actions have almost gotten him killed. That has to dent any desire to repair fraying bonds. If I were a man, he would punch me, ridding himself of his anger and we would then hug and leave it all behind us. I am a woman though, and men never know how to really handle us in a fall out. They don’t feel right saying the words that skip across their tongues so they avoid talking to us at all. I don’t know what I would say to him, either. Sorry just doesn’t seem heartfelt enough.

  My mind is drowning in my thoughts when I feel the butterfly-like caress of fingers on my back. They descend down my back, drifting along my spine, and the gentleness of it rolls me to standing. Only Lawless would be so bold as to touch me like this and I close my eyes, letting him wordlessly seduce me.

  His fingernails from the other hand presses into the skin of my thigh, scraping upwards on the tender flesh and the sensation of pleasure and pain pulls a moan from me. His breath is directly on the back of my neck, quickening my breathing with the anticipation of his mouth. My body is already responding with tightening and swelling, growing warm with my desire for him. I know this position well and I am already imagining the feel of his hands on my hips, the sounds of his moaning with the rhythm of our bodies, and the shattering release we will share with how well he knows how to bring me.

  His hand travels my stomach, expanding his fingers as they slowly reach lower and I shiver under his touch, encouraging him. I open my eyes to watch him touch me and a scream gags my throat.

  These are not the memorized fingers of a lover, but the flesh-rotting extensions of decay. I struggle to free myself from the arm’s embrace that I was just willingly leaning into. The mouth that I thought was waiting to kiss me licks the base of my neck. The tongue feels like a thick slug slipping along my flesh. A demonic guttural male sound comes from behind me as his fingers dig into my lower stomach, trying to peel me open like a present filled with hidden delights.

  The same fingers that I thought I would watch with enchantment, I now stare at in misery as they begin to tear into me. Blood oozes from the wound under the nails before trickling down my legs. He is going to eviscerate me as I watch, unable to escape from his vice-like grip. I scream from the pain as he pulls me apart like delicate lace.

  The blood that was once droplets now flows like a thin stream. I can taste the bile of my fear. The beating of my heart hammers in my ears when my need for survival takes over any squeamish logic that I would cater.

  I no longer pull on his arm to free myself. I mimic his actions and begin to shred his arm with my nails. His is oblivious to any pain that motivates me to desperation. I pull strands of his skin away like the layers of rotten wood. His dark, black blood rushes over my hands the deeper I gouge, scooping out corroded tendons to expose the bone. His body has been months without proper nutrients and the bones fract
ure with my punishing assault. I plead with the forming fissures to separate before his toying becomes deadly. Already his fingers have lost some of their strength with the damage, but it is not enough. His fingers still wiggle into my stomach like worms eating away at me.

  The sounds of his bones breaking like the snapping of a wishing bone give me hope. They fracture bit by bit as I punch against them letting my hope give the ball of my fist strength. It’s rewarded when the arm hangs limply, suspended in the air only by the depths of my stomach the fingers have penetrated and what is left of the destruction of muscles I have caused.

  The slug had been traveling my neck like it was ice cream. Now sensing something has changed, he pauses with the tip of it still wiggling against me, betraying his mind’s command. With his arm broken, the pause buys me the time I need to escape. Slipping past the shower’s curtain, I start to run as he grasps me by the hair. The sudden shift in momentum sends me falling backwards with the slick tiles producing no traction. The collision leaves my head spinning, stunning me with dots of bright lights. I feel him before my vision clears enough to allow me to see him.

  He is licking the cavern his fingers have made, drawing my blood into his mouth. He pins me with his weight while fixing his mouth over the jagged wound, sucking the raw meat allowing him to swallow the reward. With each swallow, he is chewing his way into me into like a parasite burrowing deep into its victim. My head is spinning from the pain, making it hard to concentrate. The pain brings ragged screams fighting to escape my body from the torture as he fights to enter me.

  I have no weapon. There is no object around me that I can see to save me. I can hear my flesh separating under his probing tongue. I can feel my blood flowing hot over me as it warms the tiles, scenting the room with coppery death. It churns with the smell of decay from my abuser like Halloween potpourri.