by Allison Rios
Robert’s past was finally catching up to him. It had been years ago that he had raced from the hospital to his parent’s home, his eyes filled with the most incredible fear that had ever coursed through his veins.
It had been a cloudy day when Rose came into the world. Robert had driven the rattling truck up the pebbled driveway, the gray and white stone building looming ahead. The gloomy residence was as disconsolate as the name: Lee County Psychiatric Hospital.
He knew Addie would never tell her mother about Rose and he thought the grandmother of his child should know. Maybe if the woman everyone had labeled as crazy thought her new, tiny granddaughter Rose needed her, she’d snap out of whatever the illness was. Maybe she’d return home and be a mother and grandmother to the growing family and help them raise the newborn.
He walked through the aging wooden doors with several coats of paint peeling from their exterior, obvious signs of years of attempts to keep the dilapidated building updated. His boots were heavy, creating loud echoes as they made their way through a lobby that looked about the same as the outside. An unhappy nurse allowed him to sign in and pointed him in the direction of Addie’s mother, not bothering to walk him to his destination.
He carefully ambled down the decrepit hallway, glancing into room after room until he saw her. She was a replica of Addie, just much older and with all gray hair, yet still stunning. It was obvious where Addie’s exquisiteness came from.
“Mrs. Jenko?” he whispered, pausing at the door.
She didn’t look up. Her hands were folded in front of her and she was only whispering inaudible words, some kind of poem maybe. Her hair looked tangled and messy, the same way he felt right about then. A nurse rocked in a chair in the corner, quietly reading a book.
“Mrs. Jenko, I’m here to talk about Addie,” he said gently.
Careful to stay a few feet away from her as he bent down a little, he didn’t want to frighten her as he himself was already terrified. They’d never met and Addie had only spoken of her once.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Addie,” she drawled out, a flickering of recognition apparent in her eyes. “I know an Addie.”
“Yes, you do,” he said in his most positive voice. Perhaps she might come around for her daughter. “She’s your daughter. And she … she and I just had a baby girl.”
“Addie’s a baby?”
“No, no, Mrs. Jenko. Addie has a baby of her own. Your grandbaby. I thought maybe you might want to meet her.”
He reached out and placed his hand gently on her arm. Her eyes met his and her body instantly went into a spasm.
“Get out!” she cried out, her hands now gripping the side of her wheelchair. “I know what you are! Get out!” A blind hatred filled her eyes and combined with a pre-existing fear.
“Mrs. Jenko, stop, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know what you are, you Grim! Get out of here! Don’t touch me!”
A nurse pounced into the room as he stood up to move closer. He reached out to calm her down, fearful of the attention she’d draw. He wasn’t there to hurt her. And what the hell is a Grim, he wondered? She really was as crazy as Addie said, he thought.
His heart raced in panic as nurses began running in the hallway. His hand landed upon hers again and a shock surged through them both. She sucked in a massive breath with an equally eerie gasp and collapsed. He caught her in his arms as the nurse called for backup. It felt as though bolts of electricity were surging through them and the fear was nearly palpable. It consumed his entire being as his stomach churned. He felt like vomiting.
He stared down at who he hoped would be his future mother-in-law as her eyes snapped open and glared into his.
“You stay away from my girls,” she growled. “You’re touch will kill them! Stay away!”
Her eyes shut again and her body went completely still. The nurse was already pulling her out of Robert’s grasp and gently to the floor as he backed away against the wall.
“You okay sir?” a female’s voice asked, the outline of scrubs blurred from the tears in his eyes. “You okay? She’s a crazy old loon, sir. You can’t take what she says with any certainty. Sir, you okay?”
The words were a blur, as was his mind, as he struggled to filter what had just happened. He wasn’t sure what the nurse was saying, just as he wasn’t sure what he had just felt. There was only one thing he knew for certain.
“Someone find a doctor!” another stern, female voice yelled. “I can’t find a heartbeat!”
“You better get on out of here,” the first nurse said, pointing towards the door. “We’ve got work to do.”
He’d killed her. He’d killed Addie’s mother. He didn’t know how or why, but the evidence was sprawled out on the floor in front of him.
The truck couldn’t move fast enough as he bolted back to his house. One look in Robert’s eyes and his father immediately knew why he was there: it had happened.
“Sit down, son,” he said.
He led the way to the monochrome sofas that decorated the tiny room, while keeping a safe distance from the young man with no control over his own body. Robert held his own hands out and away from himself, thinking of them not as hands but as a misfiring weapon.
“I think it’s about time we talk.”
“You know?” Robert coarsely whispered as he fought to hear above the synapsis firing in his brain. “What’s happening to me?”
“You’re a… very special type of person, Robert. You have … how can I put this? You have extraordinary capabilities and an even larger responsibility to the world.”
“Are you saying I’m like, some sort of superhero or something?”
Robert’s eyes were wider than an owl’s, his confused body trembling. He stared at his hands as though they were enemies capable of great harm. Indeed, they were.
“Not exactly. You have a special gift; that is for certain. I had it before you and there are many others with it, too.”
“You can do this?” he asked incredulously.
“Do what?” His father wanted to hear the unmistakable words for himself.
“I killed Mrs. Jenko.”
“You what?”
“I don’t know how. I touched her, and she – I don’t know, she just fell, like I shocked her to death or something!”
“Calm down, son.”
“Calm down? Dad, I just killed someone. Not just someone. I killed Addie’s mom! I don’t even know. She’s gone because of me!”
“I know,” his father whispered, walking across the room to near Robert’s chair and crouching down. “Just to be safe, keep your hands to yourself for a while, okay?”
Robert’s frozen, frightened stare bored directly through his father. Robert was having difficulty getting the story out in an understandable way, his words racing and muttered between trembling lips.
“I just left. I just ran out of there. Oh my God, I have to go back Dad. I have to go back and tell them what I did!”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Dad!”
“Son, listen. You didn’t do anything wrong. You have a gift.”
“A gift? This is a gift?”
“Son, this is what we do… now you, too. We don’t kill. We balance. And until you gain control of this power, you are definitely a risk to anyone around you.”
“What are you talking about? What balance?”
“Do you remember all the stories I told you growing up?”
“What stories, Dad?”
“About the man who could send anything to heaven with his hands.”
“That was true?”
All of this was a bit much for Robert. He was instantly angry at his father for not speaking of this beforehand, save for a few bedtime stories. What if it had happened and he’d been holding Rose? Or Addie?
“What balance?”
“The balance of life on earth. We are the Grims, the ones who remove life from the planet. The Healers ch
oose who to keep and let go. It’s not a pretty system by any means, but you have to understand … look at all that medicine has done for the earth … the world would be vastly overpopulated, resources gone. We are here to keep a balance.”
“We’re here to kill people, you mean.” The animosity was overly apparent in Robert’s voice.
“Not kill, Robert. Balance. You cannot think of it like that. You aren’t born to harm people – you are born to keep the world moving, keep generations being born well into the future. Get rid of bad people when nature allows. And sometimes, yes, get rid of the good, too.”
“You’re a monster!” Robert said, scooting away from his father until he was nearly off the chair.
If he thought his weakened knees would allow him to run, he would have bolted.
His father seemed genuinely hurt at the notion. He’d never liked doing what had to be done either and often considered himself a monster; but for his son to feel the same…
“I’m sorry, Robert,” he whispered. “I had hoped perhaps it would skip you. That you would go on to a free life; that you and Addie would be happy together.”
“Why aren’t you still like this? Like me?”
“I gave it up to be with your mother. To pass the genes on to someone who might lead us on the right path in life – the path of good decisions instead of the angry choices being made by a few of our kind who are only concerned with hurting others.”
“So you did mean for me to get this, didn’t you?”
“At first, yes. Then when you were born everything changed. It was amazing. I held you in my arms and suddenly my concern was for nothing else but you – not for our race, our society, nothing. Just you. And I wanted a normal life for you. I prayed as you grew that you would be alright.”
“Can I give this away? Like you did? Can I say no and be with Addie?”
He wanted to wrap his arms around her again and his heart leapt with joy at the thought of just handing off this responsibility to the universe.
“I’m afraid not,” his father replied, the wound to his soul visible in his teary eyes. “At least not right now. Unlike Healers, we find our gift earlier – normally a few years or so and usually when something big happens in our life. Your trigger must have been your daughter. And also unlike Healers, we cannot give it up right away. You have to uphold the gift and the laws of it for five full years before you can walk away. That is part of the curse handed down to us after our group became divided. We all suffer the consequences.”
Robert’s body shuttered.
“How long until I can control this? Can I stay with Addie?”
“It will be years, Robert. You have to learn how to harness the energy and keep it inside of you. I have a book for you, passed down through our family for generations. It will help you understand.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” It was the inevitable question his father always figured he’d have to answer.
“What kind of life would you have had, my son?” he asked, reaching a hand out to Robert. The young man instinctively shrunk away from the contact. He might have been angry with his father, but he wasn’t about to be responsible for killing him.
“To know that this destiny awaited you? And if you didn’t inherit it, you would never have needed to know about this. We’re not like Healers in that regard either – if you don’t inherit the ability, you don’t pass it on to your offspring, either.”
“My offspring? Rose?” The realization hit him – now his newborn Rose might be one of them. Rose might have this future in her someday. What the hell was he going to do then?
“I’m so, so sorry Robert.”
“I have to go. I have to go to the hospital and tell Addie! I have to tell her what happened.”
“Son, you can’t do that.”
“I won’t touch anything. I won’t touch her or the baby.”
“Son, you can’t do that. You’re emotional and unfocused. You could slip. What happened to Mrs. Jenko could happen to them until you can control this.”
“Dad, I cannot, not go back there! I can’t abandon her. I won’t do that to her.”
“You don’t have a choice, son. What are you going to do when you see her? When you see Rose and you want to scoop the child up and protect her with every inch of your soul? In your case, unfortunately, the only way you can protect her is to leave.”
Robert let the realization seep in. His father was right; the only way he’d be able to protect them would be to leave. He couldn’t say goodbye because Addie would never understand. He just needed to disappear. It was selfish and cowardly and he fought the feelings by reminding himself it was necessary.
“Get settled somewhere. Call me. I will teach you everything you need to know. It just has to be from a distance, son, to protect those you love.”
With the anger of one thousand warriors, Robert ran to his room and packed a bag, heading out into the hot afternoon sun and into the unknown. Addie had grown tired of waiting for him to bring them home from the hospital and arrived at his house just in time to see the truck driving away.
Permanently. He knew with all of his heart that leaving would crush her. She’d always been so delicate, so unsure, and so unconfident. This would be the proverbial nail in her coffin – but at least this way, the coffin was proverbial, he thought. Staying meant it would be far too real and wooden.
He remembered the quivering of his hands as he clutched the steering wheel, hoping that someday she would have the normal life he’d wanted for her. Praying that she wouldn’t turn back into the broken girl he’d first met, paralyzed by the fear of being who everyone wanted her to be, instead of simply who she was.
He recalled her bitter face as she’d tried to flag him down. Were there any words better suited to describe something much worse than heartache? He couldn’t think of any – but those would be the only ones apt to fit the look on her face.
As he sat in a diner for dinner that first evening after he’d left, eating a burger and scared out of his mind, he found the food didn’t even taste the same anymore. It all seemed so contrite. He could starve himself, he thought, pushing the food away. Just let himself die. The news flickered on the black and white television on the café counter. While the setup was old, the news was brand new and full of horror. So many bad people in the world he thought. Bad people who get to live and do terrible things.
And I’m one of them, he said to himself.
Then there it was: his way out, his way to only affect those who truly deserved it. The suspect on the television had robbed a bank, sentenced to eight years. Hell, he’d give up an extra three years of his life to be in jail away from everyone, even if it meant being away longer than the five years his father had spoken of.
He drove far across the country where his name wouldn’t make local news and he could retain some level of anonymity. He gave away what little he had at a shelter and walked into a bank the next morning with the only weapon he had: a knife.
17 REPRISAL
Addie stepped out into the yard, leaving Robert and Rose at the kitchen counter with yellow polka-dotted ceramic bowls of ice cream.
She wiped her weary face with her hands, running them back along her forehead and through her windblown hair. These last few days had been like the twilight zone; mysterious and obsolete and making absolutely no sense at all. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the man sitting inside of her house. For years she had wanted him to come home. She’d yearned to see his face again, no matter how angry she might have been at him. She wanted his strong, farm-built arms around her and his soft whisper in her ear telling her everything would be okay.
And now, after a few days of him being back in her life, she’d had time to process it all. Here he was, standing in front of her again and forcing a sickening realization to run throughout her veins: she wasn’t sure she even wanted him anymore.
Perhaps it was the pure disdain she held for all he had put her through by leaving. Or perha
ps it was fear of the unknown. Regardless, part of her heart still did indeed want the family she always wished they’d be, while the larger majority of her heart wanted to force him out of town. She wanted control of the outcome this time. She wasn’t going to let him hurt her again, she promised herself.
She slid down the side of her beat up truck to the ground, pulled her knees into herself. AJ watched from behind the screen door of the B&B’s kitchen, wanting to go out to her and comfort her. Again though, he reminded himself, getting close to her would do no good, especially with this man back in town. Not just a man; Rose’s father.
He could still smell Addie, her sweet perfume permeated anything she touched. He closed his eyes and took it in, reveled in the memories it brought to his mind of their lips pressed together. The passion behind that motion was fresh in his mind. It sent a shudder through his body and drew goose bumps across his skin.
His mind took a back seat to the feelings and he pushed through the door and across the lush, green lawn before his heart had a chance to stop him.
With every ounce of self-restraint he had in his being, he forced himself to slow his walk as he approached her. He stood beside her shrunken form for a moment, his hands strongly on his hips. He begged her silently for an invitation to sit down. Her eyes rose to meet his, the long, thin fingers of her hand shading her eyes from the afternoon sun. She smiled, the crooked type that always crossed her face when she was in need of consolation. He’d memorized every emotion she carried on her face in the short time he’d known her. He found comfort in having gotten to know someone that intimately.
He let his twitchy body slide down next to hers, every inch of him wanting to wrap her in an embrace that told the world she was his. He knew better though, and instead pulled his knees into his chest and clasped his hands together in front to hold them in place.
“How’s life?” he asked. A smirk arose as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.
“Dandy. I’m fairly certain I’m right on schedule to be abducted by aliens tonight. And tomorrow I’ll be riding my dinosaur into town to eat lunch with the mermaids.”