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Wraith ; Semblance

Page 42

by Riley Mason


  CHAPTER 67

  My dad gently places the blade in my hand and closes my fingers around it. He looks at me with a determination that I’ve rarely seen in him, one that seems strange even to my memories.

  I take it from him because he's given it to me because I want to use it, because, in the end, he's right. He pulls his hand back and leaves me with it, I know he sees this as a gift, and I sort of feel the same way about it. He was never supposed to give me anything again. My eyes were never supposed to see him again.

  With my thumb, I slide open the blade and peel it apart until it's taught, and I see the shimmering surgical steel that’s there, impatient to cut. I know how sharp it is, I can tell by sliding my thumb across it and feeling it’s precise cut against the rivets of my fingerprints.

  “Go ahead, baby,” he tells me, his words are perfect.

  I take in a deep breath, swallow it, and hold it. I don't want to let it go.

  It tightens in my chest, fighting because it knows it has to get out, it can’t stay that long, my body is craving new air that I don't want to give to it. I’m punishing it for putting me in this position. For failing me when I needed it to be there for me. Teaching my mind a lesson for not parting with the garbage that I had instructed it to get rid of. Hanging onto old antiques and souvenirs is dangerous, but it didn't want to listen to me.

  I hold the blade to my skin, the forearm that’s already soaked and soggy with blood.

  I squint my eyes and take aim drawing the line down my forearm that I'm going to follow, the path that my dad has laid out for me as he watches in amazement and astonishment that feels like pride even if I'm fooling myself into thinking that's it.

  The blade is in place, the corner of the razor sets on my skin, pressing slowly into it, down into the puddle of blood that's already there. "Do it, baby," my dad tells me. "Drag it."

  I look at him, gaining some approval, some appreciation that I wasn't able to gather from him when he was alive when I would've been old enough to recognize that I might lose it before I had a chance to keep it.

  There’s a second thought going through me. I don’t want to do this, this isn’t who I am anymore, and I don't want it to be now, but I know that my dad wants it. It’s what he’s waiting for, what he’s watching for.

  “I can’t do it,” I tell him, biting my lower lip, afraid to make eye contact with him because I can’t stand to see the disappointment that I know he’s giving me.

  Air breezes out of his smile, a soft simple gesture of his lips, it's inviting enough that I look up at him, he doesn't look hurt, but he does look indifferent. His burly hands wrap around the handle for me, relieving the grip that my fingers had on it. Taking it away from me before I had a chance to do something with it. Something I know that he wanted me to do, something I would've regretted.

  “It’s okay,” he says to me, his words hushed like he doesn’t want anyone else to hear them. I even see his eyes look around, carefully, focusing on the shadows ahead of him. I look there too, to see if she’s there. To see if she’s been watching us, she hasn’t.

  When the blade is back in his grip, he doesn't close it, instead, he lifts his hands up and slides it through my forearm and in one quick motion, drags it across my skin.

  I scream.

  Then the blade falls to the floor, my daddy is gone, I’m left alone, bleeding out of all the arteries and veins that he cut through.

  CHAPTER 68

  My eyes open wide, a scream runs out of me, and I gasp for air as I slide up and off my bed.

  My hand goes over my mouth, holding in the voice that’s sliding out of me.

  I look around the apartment, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The dream was so real, so vivid, I hadn’t even known that I fell asleep.

  The sound of the television is distracting enough that when I turn to it, I see there is an infomercial on about blenders. A man in an apron, surgically implanted smile, pounds of makeup, cheerily goes on about blending feats. I try and rub the sleep out of my eye, clearing as much of it out as I can.

  My head is pounding, and my mouth is dry as I toss the sheets and the blanket off me and walk over to the kitchen. My eyes are still adjusting to the light of the room, at least some sunlight makes it past the drapes designed to keep as much of it out as possible. I’m still rubbing my eyes, trying to keep the blur out of them.

  I squint before I open the refrigerator, knowing the small light in there is aggravating. Barely able to see, I reach in, test the sizes and samples of what’s on the door, and find the bottle of water I’m looking for. Before the door is closed, the top is off and I’m chugging the bottle. The water making belching noises as it’s violently churned inside of the bottle.

  I lick my lips when I’m done as I take myself and the bottle to the bathroom and turn on the light, covering my eyes with my arm to make sure the light isn’t too brutal on me.

  I wait there, waiting for my pupils to settle, waiting for all the bulbs to stop flashing, for the electricity to finally arrive at its target.

  My face in the mirror looks tired but it looks fine. The dream was so real, it was so vivid that it’s hard to not believe it had happened. All these memories dredged up in me and feeling them all at once was hard on my heart.

  I slowly close my eyes and carefully work a breath through my system, turning my arms around so that my forearms are looking up at me. I know what’s there and I’m not surprised when I see them.

  At least I’m mostly surprised to see they aren’t aggravated or stained a new red or purple. That the skin that’s closed over those mistakes hasn’t been irritated or chopped back open.

  I still can’t fight the feeling of my stomach churning. I touch on my stomach to try and suppress the pains that are there, like boiling acid in my midsection, so violent, I can feel the acid climbing up my throat and then, just like in the dream, I turn the water on in the sink and I vomit.

  CHAPTER 69

  I feel empty when I’m done, hollow. I use the water to wash the scraps of stomach acid from the corners of my mouth. I blow my nose and wipe the red from my eyes, the tears that come with it. The clenching feeling in my stomach, that twist that forces all of me up to the surface is unsettling.

  Looking around my apartment, I don’t feel right. The mood of that nightmare doesn’t sit well with me. It’s almost as if I’ve gotten up but I never really woke up.

  Making my way to the kitchen, I assemble the coffee in the Keurig, add a few sprinkles of sugar mix with a healthy helping of cream and leave the cup under there while the coffee boils and drips.

  I rub my face, my hand searches through my hair, running into tangles that it pushes past. My eyes catch my bed, a sliver of it in between the door frame that hangs at an angle that I can see it from the kitchen. I’ve never seen it like this, so uninviting, unwelcoming for me to come back to it, stretch out, and enjoy a few more hours of sleep. I don’t want it, I don’t want to go near it.

  It's almost as if it's taken on a diseased, spoiled version of itself. An object that's too dangerous to put me near. A caution that I have to stay away from it at all costs because now I know the price of its danger, the penalty of its attack.

  I can’t shake these visions out of my head, they just won’t leave. I even hit myself in the forehead, trying to incite a headache that will at least distract me enough to wash away these thoughts. One that can force them out at least for a time, just so I can get my bearings back, situate myself for the day.

  The coffee maker howls and collecting it, I take a small sip, it's a relief as the coffee starts its work. The fatigue came out of the bed with me, if a headache can't show when I need it to, I can all but guarantee that caffeine will do the job.

  I can’t get over the feeling of how heavy my heart is. The weight that’s transferred from that play of my subconscious. All the repressed emotions and memories that felt the need to unload on me when they’ve been gone for so long. Reminding me of what I used to do, almost as if
they were daring me to do it again.

  My mind dwelled on this longer than I wanted it to, longer than I cared to have it search that subject. I considered it dead and buried and was fine to leave it in that place, alone and abandoned. It didn’t seem to have any such motive.

  Even with taking small, slow sips of the coffee, brushing the taste in my mouth with something delicious and familiar, at the same time it felt old and bland, different but not a different I’ve come to recognize. That alternation of flavor when a different amount of one ingredient is added or another is shorted. It was almost as if it tasted dry, flat.

  Everything was unsettled in me, disproportionate, to the point where, just like the coffee, there were few things I could recognize when I had the chance to study them. My bed, for certain, was probably the biggest variable in the house. Even when I walked to the door frame that led me into my bedroom, I refused to cross the threshold. Instead, it was easier to stare at the savage animal it had become while it was dormant rather than wake it up again. Lay in it and allow it back into a place I didn't want it to go.

  My eyes fluttered with anger as I looked at it, rightfully placing the blame for how I felt now on the cushions, the pillows, the sheets, and the blanket. The darkness of the room, the layout and the pattern, knowing I had done so well to hide these hideous things that something about this just didn't feel right.

  I didn’t want to look at it, I didn’t even want to acknowledge it, all I wanted was to forget it had ever happened.

  I just wanted it to go away. I wanted it to vanish from my sight.

  CHAPTER 70

  I go to the window in the living room and peel aside the drape that does its work of blocking the sun. All the windows in the apartment have them. I'm very sensitive to light when I sleep. Even the smallest ray briskly walking through my living room will force me out of sleep. Sharing a room with it will be more than enough to keep me from falling asleep again once it's done the work of raising me from my rest.

  The other is the migraines. A side effect that's followed me through the path from my past life to my current one. Most of the time, they are manageable. A handful of pills at the right time can suppress them and keep me out of the blinding pain that some of their cousins have held me in. Like a submission that just won’t listen to my tap out.

  Other times, certain times, it feels like my head is going to explode. That there is some charge set, pierced into my temples, lined to a wick with dynamite at the other end of it. That someone has drilled these charges into my brain. When that happens, even absolute dark is not enough to massage away the pain.

  Pain like that is consistent because it has the strength to be. It doesn’t go anywhere, I’ve learned, because it doesn’t have to. It has enough endurance to last the medications that are deployed into my body to fight it and it travels at leisure rather than on a set schedule.

  I realized how stupid it was to call up a headache, despite how uneasy I felt, how forgotten, it was a dumb move on my part.

  Taking another sip of the coffee, I swiped the drape away to allow some sunlight in. I found none. Instead, I found a downpour roaring in the street on the other side of me. Heavy clouds hung so low over Manhattan that it looked like it was night outside, not the early hours of the morning where the black will take on a grey as the sunlight burns the clouds at the other end.

  I watched as lightning strikes sprayed the ground in the distance and the moan of thunder was so loud, I felt it slide across the window as I put my hand to it, feeling it's currents as it moved through the air. Watching as the impressions remained on the window long after I pulled my hand back to the safety and warmth of my mug and watched it vanish.

  My eyes watched the people below, as they scurried to and from wherever they were going, looking for safety and salvation in cabs and storefronts, in subway terminals, and under awnings.

  Then I heard it, the sound of an alarm going off behind me, somewhere from the bedroom. It wasn’t the alarm clock from my phone, my phone was sitting safely on the countertop. This wasn't it that.

  It was the same alarm I heard when the woman was in the room, ready to see her baby.

  CHAPTER 71

  I run to the sound, dropping my coffee on the floor, hearing the pottery of the coffee cup shatter.

  When I get there, to the frame of the bedroom, the sound doesn’t change, it doesn’t reset, it simply shows me what it was and I can hear it loud and clear, the same that I had heard from the other room. The dull whine of a fire engine honking and playing its siren to make it through traffic.

  My hand presses against my face, I'm relieved but mortified that I couldn't realize the difference in the sound as they played. There is a shock at the stupidity that’s in me, a realization that I’m falling apart regardless if I’m awake or asleep. It feels like something did follow me out of that sleep. That that something has latched onto me somewhere and is keeping me connected with old thoughts that I want nothing to do with.

  The doctors I’ve worked with always said that memories, especially those as complex and deceptive as mine are hard to contain for life. They go dormant, they hibernated for a time in parts of your mind that you don’t see on any regular basis. But, at times, they get curious, they get brazen, and they will decide when it’s time to venture out.

  I didn’t want that now. I didn’t want that ever. I was content with leaving these memories to die somewhere in my head, away from where they would have a chance to interfere with me again.

  For a second, I think about my baby, the child that never was and I think about the man that was part of my life during that period. The family that I almost had, the final thing that would've put all this to rest inside of me. It would’ve been the final lock that kept all this from ever wandering back into my world from its own.

  A knock at my door draws me out of my own head, breaking the trance that’s sliding over me like a hungry snake wrapping me into its embrace.

  I quickly take an inventory of myself, remembering the broken mug in the living room, the hot coffee soaking into the carpet at this point. I'm wearing a pair of men's boxers and an undershirt and running my hand through my hair. I can feel the tangled mess that it sits in.

  When I walk to the door, and peer through, at first, I don’t see anyone. There’s nothing there except the other end of the hall, the rows of other apartment doors, the flat grey carpet laying on the floor lining the hall.

  I slowly back my head away and before I walk, I hear another knock. Softer, almost dainty, and lower on the door and this time when I look through the peephole there is something. The top of a head, small and dirty blonde.

  Taking a step back, my hand reaches for the doorknob but pauses, just for a second, I'm not sure why but it does. It's like my hand freezes in place, waiting for my consciousness to make the next decision on what to do. Like there is some waiting game happening on if this door should, in fact, open or if it should just simply stay closed.

  I tempt fate and open it because I am curious and I want to know who is on the other end waiting there for me, knocking at my door.

  When I see her, my head goes to one side, she's small no more than five or six years old. Her hair is well kept, straightened as she stands there in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I wait for her to say something, to tell me who she is and what she's doing there, that I know her mother or her father—but I can't imagine what's going to come out of her mouth.

  I bend down to her, resting on one knee as I make eye contact with her gorgeous sapphire eyes before I realize, they don't both share the same color. One is blue, the other is light grey. "Hello," I finally say to her. My voice is gentle, calm, soothing to her because despite her intention, regardless that she knocked on my door, she’s scared.

  “Mom,” she says back to me.

  I look at her, curious, and she repeats herself.

  CHAPTER 72

  My heart stopped in my chest. It felt like it had ballooned and suddenly it was just too big to f
unction. I felt my stomach stop moving as well, frozen in a time I hadn’t caught up to just yet.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  "Your Aly, you're my mommy," the little girl tells me, a smile doesn't break her face but it wanted to, I can see the corner of her lips puckering. She's holding in a laugh. Hiding her excitement at this moment.

  A flash of my frozen womb touches my imagination. “I’m sorry honey, that can’t be,” I say to her reaching out and trying to touch her hand, but she backs away from it.

  “No, you’re my mom,” the little girl insists.

  My mind is rational, but I can't help but admit I'm trying to see if there is a reasonable possibility to all of this. That there is something I might've missed. But I know that I'm right, I know that my womb is damaged, too broken to put a life together.

  I can't help but see resemblances in her to me, to Luke. They are decorated all over her face. It was like she was drawn from a photograph of each of us in our youth, an artist finely crafting her appearance for us. Her father’s hair, the shape of my eyes, his nose, and my lips. She even has an eye color from each of her parents, I hadn’t realized that when I had first seen her. Her right eye is my identical, her left belongs to her father.

  I want to take her in, to hug her but I have to stop myself. My impulses are marching ahead of me and they need to be put into control. “Sweetie, how did you get here?”

  “I’ve always been here,” she says her voice tickled with laughter.

  “No, baby, today, how did you get to me?”

  “You forgot me in the hospital,” she said, her voice downturned.

  I look down at myself, my hand touches my womb as if I’m trying to feel if there was a life there at one point. That at one time, this little girl might’ve occupied some part of me, inherited traits from inside of my body. I wanted to believe it, I really did, but I can trust in the pain of repressed memories, I can’t believe memories will just up and vanish, especially ones that are so important to me.

 

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