by L.C. Barlow
Chapter 26
GONE
I knew what it meant when Cyrus asked me down into the basement, and my arms involuntarily shook.
Just four weeks ago, I had had the pleasure of those brick walls, and Cyrus had cracked one of my kneecaps in two, among other various bodily catastrophes.
I almost bolted, truly, but then a knowing resignation clamped my hand to its own, and I slipped down the spiral staircase behind him, into the rooms without windows, past the wine.
Dangling from the ceiling were the old, rusty cuffs, and they reminded me of bats still sleeping.
"Cuff yourself," Cyrus said, and I slipped my jacket off. I stepped to the cuffs and touched them, and it was as though a psychic energy lay within them - electricity needing a body to pop. I instantly dropped my hands and whirled around.
"What is this for?" I asked urgently.
Cyrus took the brown folding chair from the corner of the room, and he popped it open like a tent. He brought the chair to just a few feet away, and he sat in it. "I want to speak with you."
"That requires this?"
"It requires whatever I say it does." It was nonchalant, his acts, and they did not seem from a maniac. Rather, it was like the old Cyrus with the grey hawk eyes that peered at me as he crossed his legs and arms and leaned back like a man in a smoking room.
I flicked my hands against the hanging cuffs and watched them swing. I sighed. They were too high for me to ask whether they should go in front or behind. They would have to go in front, and my wrists would be placed just above my forehead.
I cuffed myself as Cyrus had requested, and I leaned my head against my arms and heaved another breath. This day would be painful, I knew. But eventually, eventually it would end. I knew that as well.
Cyrus hopped up and strolled to me, checked the tightness of the cuffs from just a few inches away, tightened them both one notch. He spun around. "Let's talk about Sloan."
"What about him?"
"You murdered his wife... among other things"
I nodded my head against my hands. "Just as you asked me to."
"Did you enjoy it?" he asked, and he whirled back around, facing me, and he reclined again in the chair. He crossed his legs and took out a cigar from his inner jacket pocket.
He was dressed all in black - black slacks, a fitted black jacket, and a grey shirt so dark that it would seem black, had the suit not provided a blacker comparison. The material was well-made and had a sheen to it. It was almost glossy. Beneath those clothes, though, I knew his shoulder still bled. Sloan's wife had made sure of that.
"I did not," I replied truthfully.
"Why?"
I twisted my head up and looked at the dank light bulb. "I suppose because she was a woman."
"Ah," he said, and he put the cigar in his mouth. He lit the end and puffed on it until smoky clouds billowed between us and I could smell cotton candy and bitterness. "But you're a woman, Jacqueline." For the first time, in forever, my full name was used.
"Is that what I am?"
This made Cyrus smile, but I wasn't sure why. He licked his lips and plucked something from them, and he threw it to the floor. "I've never treated you like you were one, have I?"
"No," I said, and I almost told him 'thank you for it,' but then I did not. I added, "But maybe the way I am didn't allow for it."
"What do you mean?"
" Maybe, if I had acted like one, you would have treated me like a woman."
"I wouldn't have."
"Well, I appreciate that."
There was silence between us, and his sparkling eyes searched over me. I shifted my feet, trying to allow blood flow to continue its regular course to my hands, but it was difficult. My arms were already uncomfortable and tingling.
"I don't understand," he said, "why it would still bother you when I have taught you better."
"With men," I moved my forehead back and forth against my arms, thinking, "it's different. There's the possibility of something more there, when you kill them. Emasculation, I suppose. With women, there's not. Yes, I guess that's a problem."
"Kind of like kicking a dog when it's already down. That's killing a woman."
"If that's the way you want to put it."
He twisted in his seat and took another draw on his cigar. His head was cocked to the side, and his silver hair glinted in the light like strands of silk.
"I used to feel that way, too," he said to me.
"What happened?"
He twirled his hand out, like he held a glass of wine, and he stared in the distance until he returned his gaze to me. "I realized that they're all women." He took a puff on his cigar.
I paused, thinking on this.
"I don't feel like I am anything," I said.
"You feel just human," he replied.
"Not even that."
That made him smile. "I would expect not, what with your abilities now. A little bit further from the fabric of humankind you have been torn. One step closer to becoming like me." Another puff on his cigar, another ghost of a cloud placed into the air and slowly headed my way. "On the other hand, you can give life now. How is that not like a woman?" He smiled. And then, "Why did you hide it from me?"
"It's not what you're about, Cyrus. I knew you would kill me for it."
"Not kill you, Jack. Use you."
I waited for him to continue.
"Are you converted?" he asked. I laughed softly.
"You've got to be joking."
"Have I? You've been returning Christian families to the living. I think that says something."
"I was not raised a Christian," I replied. "I will never be a Christian, Cyrus. There's nothing to worry about."
"There are other things to convert people to."
I nodded my head and moved as best I could with my arms pinned above in order to physically negotiate the meaning of his words.
"I don't know what the fuck is wrong," I said. "I don't think you realize..."
"I don't realize what?"
"That I am dark enough!" I yelled. "I strangle people, and I kill them! I ruin lives! How does that not work for you? Despair is either there, or it's not! There are no striations, no variations, and I make it appear! I clothe people in it! How is it not good enough?"
"Because you now have the capacity to turn it around," he said.
"So do you," I replied. "So does everybody."
"No." He shook his head violently, smoke pouring from his nostrils back and forth in the air. "You can turn it around after the fact. There's something new in you," he pointed to me, "and I despise it."
I went to say something, but paused mid-breath, torrents of emotions coursing through me, and I knew my face must be turning red in anger.
In contrast to me, Cyrus only sat there, as cool as silver in ice, and he looked bitter.
"But it's not only that," he continued. "I can sense it in you, just standing here. I can sense something inside you... your ability to bring them back, perhaps... or your desire to. I do not like... it is disgusting." He waved the cigar out in front, leaned forward, and squinted his eyes, as though trying to pin it down. But then he quickly exhaled and dropped his arms. "A good. An innocence. I don't know. The bright man knew it was right for you, but it's sickening. I want it gone."
I gasped in exasperation. "Even if you..." and the thought I was about to say weighed me so heavily that some of the strength in my legs left me, and I leaned even more against my arms. "...there's only so much you can do about it. Maybe to get rid of it all, you're going to have to get rid of all of me."
I looked up at him, and his eyes appeared to have blackened. They were no longer icy blue.
"No," he said, and he sighed heavily. "No, that's not what this is. You were meant to be with me, you were meant to provide this ability for me. There's much worth keeping, Jack. I just need to..." And he shook his head.
"To what?" I asked, but he did not respond, except by dropping his cigar to the ground and standing. H
e came to me slowly and looked deeply into my eyes.
"Excise."
"What?" I asked, but he did not reply. Rather, he began undoing the buttons of my shirt one by one, until the front of me was bare.
He took out a knife and ran its sharp edge barely against the skin from my chest to my gut. I leaned back, trying best to evade the sharp point, but I could not escape it.
"Where did he place it?" Cyrus asked, and then he moved the knife to right above my belly-button. "Here?" he asked.
I gave him no answer, just closed my eyes, waiting for the exquisite pain to pierce me and the shock to empty me of all thought. But... nothing.
I lifted my eyelids, and he was no longer there.
I stood alone amidst the basement walls, still chained, and I swiveled around, expecting some dark form to slip through the cracks of the bricks and attack, but nothing came. I looked up, stared at where the chains met the ceiling and knew that with hours of work I could free them, but I did not have hours. Whatever was coming would come, and there was nothing I could do.
I could hear my breathing, ragged, and I didn't like it. It reminded me of the sound of my victims after they had given up.
But then I heard footsteps. They were slow and then quickening, and they belonged to more than just one set of feet.
I expected Cyrus to appear from down the hall from the left, which was the wine room, perhaps with a frightening set of surgical instruments that would make me cry in their very presence, but instead a different form appeared. It was Roland's.
"Oh fuck," I said. And when he pierced the entrance, I looked straight into his brown eyes and said, "You need to get the fuck out of here."
"That's what I'm doing, Jack," he whispered, and he nodded to me as if he was about to catch a cab and would meet me for dinner later. Then he turned and faced Cyrus who had stepped into the room from behind him.
Cyrus glanced at me, and he waved his hand in my direction. "The cycle finally ends," Cyrus said. Roland curtly nodded.
I screamed again and again at Cyrus, but it was as if I wasn't even in the room, the way they stared at each other, and after my words bounced around the empty basement, it was as if they had never been spoken. I wished I could scream loud enough for the entire world to hear and scream back, but I could only sink into myself, quietly, and grit my teeth. Again, I jerked at the cuffs and swiveled.
There was another sound that met my ears, and this, too, was the patter of footsteps approaching.
I peered up to see Alex enter the room, and then I looked to Roland, and I knew. It was utter blasphemy.
"Alex, you don't have a right to touch him," I said, and again there was no acknowledgement from any of them. It was like they were behind a glass in an apartment miles away, and I was watching the scene through a telescope. Alex's blonde head turned back and forth like a pendulum between Cyrus and Roland.
Cyrus pulled out a gun and made sure it was loaded. He handed it to Alex, and they both stood back. "Do it right this time," Cyrus said. "Not like the first."
Cyrus glanced at me, and when he did, I said, "Please don't fucking do this." He did not respond, but turned to Roland, and as he raised his arm up, Roland's entire body lifted in the air from where he stood. I gasped.
One of Roland's black, shiny shoes flopped off and hit the floor with a clap, and he floated like wax in a lava lamp just a few feet above the ground, his cream clothes moving against his body as if in a silent and invisible wind. Then, Cyrus's hand flared out straight, and Roland's body hit the back wall with a crack.
Cyrus handed the gun to Alex. "One shot in the head. That is all," he told him. Alex's hand cocked the gun and pointed it at Roland, who was not crying or grimacing or screaming, just taking it all in. He never looked away.
But before Alex did anything, Cyrus stepped to me, and then behind me, and he placed his hands against my ears. I shook, I turned, but I could not get him to let me go.
As Cyrus held me, I watched as Alex did as Cyrus asked. A shot has never resounded so loudly in me. I shook and fell down, my whole weight supported by the cutting cuffs.
Hands wrapped themselves around me and lifted me, and I was pulled up and against a warm body as one would expect from an angel.
"This time he won't be coming back," Cyrus whispered, and then I felt a hand against my temple, and I opened my eyes. The blade of a knife was before me, on which there was a puddle of blood. Alex held it, had dipped it into Roland and brought it to Cyrus, and Cyrus dabbed his hand again in this blood and pushed it against my forehead, marking me. He pulled my black hair away from my face and cooed to me. I looked to Roland's body against the wall and watched it drop to the floor like a doll, and I felt all feeling in me vanquished. My eyelids dropped.
"You've killed me," I told him.
"No," he said. "I've released you. The old bond is gone." And I felt his hands caress my neck and pull my head close to him. "That man was keeping something in you that should not have been there, but we've unhooked it now and let it go."
I was so numb, I was choking on all the numb. "He'll come back... or I'll bring him back."
"I'm going to burn him, Jack."
I looked up to see four men enter the room and carry Roland's body away, and as I watched them, I emptied too much to cry.
Cyrus kept me there for hours, long enough for the fire to catch and carry Roland far away.
It was only much later that I felt hands reach up my arms to the cuffs, and after a few clicks my arms fell. I would have hit the floor, just like Roland, but Cyrus held on to me, hugged me close.
"There is no person so wondrous as you are, and when you survive this, you will be stronger than any would think imaginable. And you will be powerful, and rich, and beautiful, and there will be nothing, absolutely nothing, that you cannot do, no action you cannot commit. And a coldness will fill you, and it will feel marvelous. It will course through you and lift you up. You will be perfect."
I felt him kiss me.
"You will be without borders, beautifully ungoverned. No need to rescue those I kill. No need to bring anyone back, but those I command. No yearning anymore, just what is. You are so lucky."
But all I could think of was the first time I had killed Roland, slid the butterfly needle into his neck and let the blood drain away, my hand clamped to his chest to feel his heart die, and the misery of that night, the agony. It was fresh in me still. I thought he would never return, but he had.
And now, I felt that he would, but he would not. He would never return, not by his own hand or by mine. The true death. I had never experienced it until then.
And I had never said, "Goodbye."