Jessica crossed one arm over the other, crinkling her ridiculous black robes. “It’s wrong the way the Western world is sex saturated. That’s why I came to ISIS.”
“It’s not wrong.” He planted one hand on the table, back rigid as the rabbi’s sermon from a decade and a half ago infiltrated his brain again. Despite his best efforts, guilt slipped into his brain along with the long gone words.
Jaw hard, Jessica slammed one hand on the stove, inches from the lighted burner. “The Torah would tell you it is.”
He kicked his chair back. “Don’t preach my religion at me.”
“I read your Torah every week at the Anglican church my grandma took me to.”
“They don’t teach my scriptures at Christian churches.” He spat out the word, feet spread in the narrow space between stove and wall in this miniscule kitchen. Why some cult spin-off of Judaism had lasted two thousand years, he’d never know.
“Yeah, they do. Have you ever even been to a Christian church?”
“Shut up.”
“I won’t shut up!” Jessica waved her arms. “You’re just as bad as my dad. If I was pregnant, you’d just leave the child in poverty, always longing for a dad, then when she’s a teenager and finally thinks maybe she found a father-figure who cares about her, he hurts her too.” Jessica plunked her bowl of stringy vegetables and rice on the table. It wobbled on the table’s edge.
Maybe a pregnancy scare had just got Jessica unhinged. That part was his fault. Also, the girl had serious daddy issues. “You’re not pregnant. I’m a doctor. I should know. And if you are, as I said, I’m a doctor. We’ll get it taken care of.” He touched her shoulder where a tendril of flame-colored hair fell free of her black headcloth.
Jessica ripped away from him. Her dish of vegetables overturned on the kitchen tile. “I’m not aborting my baby!” Blood surged across her face, turning it a brighter crimson than her hair.
“You don’t have a baby.” He passed his bowl of food to her. This conversation had made him lose his appetite anyway. When would the airstrikes lessen so he could rescue Ava?
Tears started streaming down Jessica’s cheeks.
The girl was tough and quick-thinking, but she had a powerful case of PTSD.
“Are you really going to divorce me?” Her lower lip trembled on the word “divorce.”
“I don’t have to divorce you. ISIS marriage certificates are not legally recognized by any country.” He handed her a spoon. Maybe if she ate, she’d calm down.
“But you slept with me!”
“You propositioned me like a million times.” Kaleb looked at the woman who in some mentally disturbed way considered herself his wife. “It was just sex.”
“Sex is never just sex. It’s giving yourself entirely to another person.” Angry red swelled across her face, mixing with the sweat that poured down both of them in this un-air-conditioned tenement housing.
“Then you’re obviously doing it wrong. This is why having multiple partners and not marrying the first high school dropout you find is important.”
She slapped him across the face, hard enough to break blood vessels, which technically would count as domestic violence under U.S. law.
A mortar exploded outside, but he hadn’t heard the hum of airstrikes in the past five minutes. “Women enjoy the bar scene as much as men. You just need to be more independent.”
Tears dribbled down her upper lip and splashed on her lower lip. That nefarious guilt started trying to wriggle its way into his conscience again.
“Look girl, I don’t know what you want me to say. Yeah, it sucks that you’ve been here for three years enduring a sadistic amount of violence. But I’m not going to sit here and let you say ISIS’s morals are better than the U.S.A.’s.”
“I know ISIS kills people. I saw it.” Jessica slumped into a kitchen chair, head down. Her headscarf fell over her forehead. She choked on tears as she glanced up through wet lashes. “Do you ever think though, if the West confronted their hookup scene problems, maybe ISIS recruiting wouldn’t be so appealing?”
“The Western hookup scene doesn’t have problems.” Kaleb pushed the kitchen’s curtain out of the way. Jessica had dependent personality disorder, obviously, or she never would have come up with such a crazed explanation. And somehow, he had become the object of her affliction.
Only, Ava’s blog comment had stated the exact same explanation for why she joined ISIS. A feeling he hadn’t felt since the very first time he’d disobeyed the rabbi’s injunction in a school janitor’s closet swept over him—shame.
Grabbing a cloth napkin, Jessica sobbed tears into its voluminous folds.
Outside, rubble covered the street and a building a couple hundred yards away was on fire. The echo of silence ricocheted across broken pavement though. This was their chance. “Think you can pull yourself together long enough to go save my sister’s life?”
Jessica nodded and reached for the AK-47.
Behold, sanity. He swung his medical bag over his shoulder and firmly pushed the guilt away from his conscience to go afflict some other more legalistically minded individual.
All around them, an eerie silence filled the streets. Jessica’s own footsteps reverberated in the stillness with each step she took. Ever since ISIS had taken over Mosul, civilians had preferred to stay indoors, but not like this.
The Android maps app spoke, directing them left at the next cross street. The Android-programmed English voice sounded the same as when she’d been looking for a fish and chips joint in London at sixteen.
A whir of ISIS police sirens sounded from one street over. Were they looking for Kaleb? Jessica’s breath caught. She stepped closer to him, brushing her shoulder against his.
Kaleb pushed her away. “No way. I’m not hugging some crazy woman who thinks if members of a death cult shove you into the same kitchen, suddenly you’re obligated for life to the other person.”
Something exploded to their right. The next house over burst into flames, a typical day in Allah’s caliphate.
For one moment, Jessica lifted her gaze to Kaleb’s. No glimmer of empathy shone in his eyes. He’d called her crazy. A crazy, ugly witch. Was that why he didn’t want to be married to her? Just like her dad hadn’t wanted her. Her tears soaked the suffocating cloth of her face veil, the tears hot even compared to the burning air.
“I’m sorry. I get that you’re scared with us dancing around death right now.” Kaleb touched her back and pushed her beneath the overhang of the industrial garages to their left as stray bullets peppered the right side of the road.
“I’m not scared,” Jessica said. When the emir had betrothed her to Omar, then she’d been scared. A stray bullet ricocheted off a brick two meters in front of her. The front lines and coalition forces must be very close now. Once they got Ava, they’d have to try to get through.
“Then what the #### are you crying about?” Kaleb gestured at a break between the garages and hustled her through.
Gutters overhung the half a meter opening and the cement walls on either side blocked the bullets, but the voice on her Android started yelling at them to turn left. She pushed her face veil out of the way as tears streamed onto her black robes.
“I know I look ugly and fat.” She’d never lost the round baby stomach. All this black made her red hair look monstrous. “I never wanted to be crazy too.”
Past the alley, a ball of flame rolled down the street as an ISIS patrol car incinerated.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Kaleb’s heavy medical bag bumped against his shoulder blades as he threw both hands in the air. His brown eyes held no sympathy. “We’re getting bombed, and you’re worried about whether I like your personality?”
Clenching the AK-47, she ducked out of the end of the alley, down the next street to where the Android had directed her. A rundown high-rise towered in front of them.
“And you think I think you’re fat. Are you fourteen?” Kaleb pounded along behind her. A buzzing noise s
ounded overhead.
Jessica’s tears rolled down her cheeks as she sprinted. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She dabbed at the tears with her face veil as the AK-47’s stock slammed into her back. She couldn’t act crazy and cry. He didn’t want that. It’s just, he was so good, she thought, unlike Taban, maybe he’d understand. Only she’d ruined this marriage too, because she wasn’t good enough.
Five meters ahead, the high-rise burst into flames.
“Stop. You’re literally running into an airstrike as you moan about true love.” Kaleb grabbed her hand and yanked her to the right side of the road.
Stairwells sank a story beneath ground by townhomes. He jumped into one and reached for her.
Pieces of the high-rise flew through the air as she dove into the stairwell. A half a meter wide overhang jutted out beneath the stairs. Kaleb shoved to the back of the overhang, making room for her.
With a crash, a piece of rebar landed on the stair railing. The railing crumpled and the jagged rebar landed centimeters from her chest. Jessica dove into the overhang as a block of concrete plummeted toward her. It crashed inside the stairwell. Concrete shards embedded in her skin.
With a muffled cry, Jessica crouched against the back of the overhang. The concrete ledge above them shivered at the impact of the collapsing high-rise.
Kaleb’s shoulder pressed against hers in the narrow space. He looked over at her as the whine of another drone sounded above their heads. “I don’t think you’re ugly, by the way, and you are smart and very capable. Now can we focus on the airstrike?”
Metal flew through the sky above them. The ground shook as entire sections of wall fell ten stories down and smashed against the pavement.
“Then why don’t you want to stay married to me?” Jessica choked back sobs. Her dad hadn’t wanted her either.
“Did I mention, we’re in the middle of an airstrike?”
“It’s my personality. I’m crazy. I’m not stable enough. I’m not mature enough. I’m not self-disciplined enough.” Jessica dug her fingers into the concrete behind her until pinpoints of blood appeared on her finger pads and her nails broke, but she couldn’t contain her tears.
Kaleb groaned.
He must despise her. He was so long-suffering putting up with her barmy ways.
“Why does it matter what I think of you?”
She hiccupped and looked over at him. You should look at your husband when he talks, not ignore him. Men liked that, and they wouldn’t leave then, like her dad had. Maybe her mum had been a bad wife.
Kaleb rested his head in his hand. Taking a deep breath, he turned his back on the exploding building pieces that flew through the air above them, and focused on her. “Being in ISIS gave you dependent personality disorder and PTSD. It’s okay. I’m sure you can find help stateside, er, Britain side. I’m sorry I called you crazy.”
Narrowing her eyes, Jessica drew her knees up to her chest in this narrow stairwell with twenty centimeters of concrete the only barrier from plummeting rebar. “I wanted a family and home and to be a wife and mother long before I came to ISIS.”
“If so, that’s sad.” Kaleb rolled his gaze up to the sky where fire now mixed with flying concrete. With a groan, he glanced at her again. “You really never aspired to live a little?”
“My dreams are sad?” She raised her voice above the pounding of entire sections of building colliding with the ground. Whoever had lived in that high-rise was now dead. “I want a little yellow house with red roses growing by the mailbox. You go around one-night-standing your way through life. You should be some psychologist’s pet project, not me!”
“You’re certifiably insane. You know that.” Kaleb reached for Jessica’s Android to try to find some way out of this rat hole once buildings stopped falling on top of them.
He probably shouldn’t have called her insane. The only reason he was alive right now was because she’d stolen this Android and the AK-47 from underneath a mujahideen’s nose. But the more she pushed this topic of love and commitment, the harder time he had suppressing the guilty feelings. He never would have touched her if he’d known the purely physical act would hurt her emotionally like this.
“I think you’re the one who’s disturbed! I think you’re some hedonist who is too busy seeking pleasure to ever find true love.” Jessica spat in his face.
“True love is a fairy tale.” Sure, people reached a certain age where they wanted someone compatible to settle down with, because it was kind of immature to be doing the bar scene at fifty. He maximized the Android map screen with two fingers and tried to suppress the guilt churning inside of him.
“True love is in the Bible, ‘greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life . . .’ ” Jessica sat rigid underneath the concrete ledge. The smell of smoke blew into the stairwell, making the air even more unbearably hot.
“Quoting the Bible now? I thought you were a Muslim.” He scrolled south on the Android map. They needed to get out of here before the fire on the street got worse and they died from smoke inhalation.
Jessica crossed her arms over her AK-47. “I prayed to Allah for a kind and virtuous husband and ended up with you. Obviously, Allah’s not real.”
An uncomfortable feeling churned through Kaleb’s small intestines. He’d never meant to hurt her, but obviously he had. Cassandra, who was benevolently trying to rescue his apartment furnishings a lifetime away in Denver, had said that he’d hurt her too.
Seriously though, Jessica’s religious affiliations were about as unstable as her mental state. Would she try Judaism next just because she fancied herself married to him? Kaleb shoved the guilt out through a villus of his small intestine, past the subcutaneous level, through his skin, to be discarded far, far away from him.
“At least Taban gave up the sexual sins of the West like pornography when he joined ISIS.” Jessica drew one arm as self-righteously over another as if her ex-husband hadn’t murdered people in cold blood.
The rabbi had preached against porn too in that oddly explicit circumcision sermon a decade and a half ago. Guilt pounded against his chest, like the falling building currently slamming against the narrow concrete ledge above their heads. “You know each one of the mujihadeen’s laptops is jam-packed with porn.”
Jessica’s jaw fell. “The imam condemned the West’s pornography.”
“There’s nothing wrong with porn. It’s how ISIS beats women and locks them away that’s evil.” Kaleb strengthened his defenses against the guilt pounding against his ribcage. If only he could strengthen this overhang above their heads. An interior apartment wall smashed onto the stairwell railing. Half a sofa leg bounced under the ledge.
“I’d rather be locked inside a house than in a marriage to a man who watches porn.” Jessica hurled the broken leg back into the stairwell with lethal force.
“Well, I’m sure if your oh-so-awesome Islamic State husband was at all successful in jihad, he was watching it. Because look here. The holy emir’s present to me.” Kaleb pulled out a DVD from his medical bag and waved it in front of her face. It was hardcore porn.
“Why do you keep it? Get rid of it.” Jessica grabbed for the DVD.
He shoved it back into his medical bag. “I haven’t looked at much of it, but I think it’s Yazidi women, which I agree is perverted. It will be evidence to help the U.N. with prosecuting for genocide.”
“Why is it perversion with these Yazidi women, but fine with your countrymen?”
“The Yazidi women were forced. The Western women look happy. I’m sure they’re getting a good paycheck.”
Jessica froze. Betrayal lit in her eyes. “You’ve watched porn.”
“Yeah.” Not excessively or anything, but it was a natural part of male culture. Once again, he hardened his defenses against the guilt attempting to break into his chest. “Maybe a little less judging innocent pastimes, and more condemning the murderous death cult you joined.”
Slowly, Jessica swallowed. All around them, debris r
ained against the earth with terrifying force, but an eerie stillness hung between the two of them. One hand on the concrete wall behind them, Jessica looked right into his eyes. “Five years ago, my stepfather told me I was so pretty I should try modeling, make some extra money because our rent check was late again.”
Kaleb turned to her.
“The studio was in a basement underneath an industrial high-rise in London. They had a professional set, high quality cameras. I was fifteen.”
Where was this story going? Kaleb’s gaze locked with Jessica’s and he could feel the pain burning in her eyes.
“It was awful, so awful. I wanted to run off the stage, but they didn’t let me, you know. When it was over, I begged them to destroy the tape. I didn’t even want the hundred pounds. My stepdad said if I told my mum about the porn video he’d forced me to make that day, he’d say it was my idea.” Terror shone from Jessica’s eyes even now, five years after what had happened.
Kaleb’s voice shook. “You were underage. That’s illegal.”
“Every time a man says he’s watching porn, I wonder if he’s watching me.”
“I’m sure it’s not you. It was an illegal event. They probably didn’t have much distribution.” He reached out to her, but he didn’t even know what to say. So much pain shone in her eyes. At fifteen, why didn’t she have a dad beating up those sicko film makers before any of this had ever happened?
Because the man had left, of course, just like his and Ava’s dad had left.
Jessica’s, well, the more intimate portions of her anatomy, had looked so familiar, even down to the placement of her freckles. A memory flashed over him that explained the déjà vu he’d felt back on their house’s dining room carpet. It hadn’t been labeled as child porn. She’d looked like a legal adult. The fifteen-minute film played through his mind again, unasked.
Those pornography film crew perverts had forced Jessica to do that? Jessica, the girl who could shoot an AK-47 faster than four ISIS soldiers, yet whose eyes lighted up each time she saw a child, had been subjected to that?
Veiled by Choice (Radical Book 3) Page 16