Transience

by Stevan Mena

  He sat down at his table and started sifting through Angelina Rosa's case file. An image of his brother Robert suddenly flashed in his brain and he abruptly cleared the table of its contents in one angry swipe. Fucking asshole!

  His head blurred and his eyes closed. He felt himself slipping in and out of consciousness. He could hear people talking — distant, muffled, as if he was submerged under water, their voices just above the surface:

  "Pulse rate?" a voice called out.

  "We're losing him," another replied.

  "Blood pressures dropping."

  "We're losing him!"

  He heard commotion, shouting. The noise gradually began to fade, leaving him in total silence. A soft voice whispered in his ear, "There's a reason."

  With those words, Jack opened his eyes and found himself in a field of grass near a giant oak tree. Two people were sitting beneath it, enjoying the shade of it's expansive branches. There was a small pond nearby.

  Jack looked up into a bright blue sky, so blue it was almost surreal. Floating below the clouds was a small yellow kite with a white ribboned tail. It swirled in the breeze, then did a few loops. Jack watched it soar and maneuver through the air. It gave him an enormous sense of peace and calm, unlike anything he'd felt in a long time. This place was warm, full of love and happiness.

  The playful kite spun and flipped, diving out of the sky. It headed straight for the ground. As it smashed and crumpled, Jack awoke.

  CHAPTER 7

  Rebecca sat in the back of the classroom watching the second hand of the clock tick away the last few minutes of the day. She repeatedly placed her pencil at the top of her desk and let it roll down. She counted tiles in the ceiling, counted the number of letters in words, whatever she could to keep her mind occupied. Sometimes it worked and kept the spells at bay. Just five more minutes.

  Even on the first day she'd arrived at her new school, the kids sensed Rebecca was different. From the way she spoke using large words, to her incredible artwork that nearly gave Mrs. Lindsay a stroke. The first time the teacher ever saw Rebecca draw, her hands were shaking as she exclaimed, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" She made Rebecca draw three more pictures that day, watching in awe while the other kids were ordered to read and keep quiet.

  The faculty found Rebecca odd, so old in her young shoes, so mature. It ingratiated her with them. It intimidated her fellow students. Rebecca wasn't just an outsider who didn't fit. She was different. The worst offense a child can make.

  The taunting didn't begin until the spells started becoming a regular occurrence. Rebecca would often scream out for no reason, or use bad language that just didn't belong in the mouth of a nine year old. She mostly didn't remember the episodes after they had passed, but the other children didn't let her forget.

  Her mood swings were unpredictable and scary. They had begun a little while after moving here during the summer. She couldn't pinpoint an exact time or place it started, just that she'd never experienced these problems back in Livonia. Things were fine before they arrived here to start over as Mommy put it.

  It was as if raw emotions were channeling through her. She didn't understand them, but recognized they were originating from within. As the problem metastasized, it started following her to school; poking and disrupting her day like a bad stomach ache. No longer just a night terror, she couldn't escape the horrible, unexplainable thoughts that were polluting her young mind. They were taking a huge toll, aging her, changing her. Isolating her.

  Doctor Hellerman had provided some methods and remedies for dealing with the episodes, like letting her stomach expand slowly while breathing deeply or humming a favorite song softly. Sometimes it worked. Other times not. She'd overheard him telling her mother the nightmares were part of some memory she was suppressing. Something she'd seen, perhaps recently, that was so horrific she just couldn't face it. That didn't seem to make sense to Rebecca, but she didn't have an explanation for the nightmares. They did feel real, like a memory, like it had actually happened. Something she was reliving — not just dreaming. Her mother disagreed.

  The last bell rang and children burst out from each door, racing to get away as if the school building were on fire. Rebecca descended the steps with her head down, avoiding eye contact. Another day down. Step over the cracks. Shoe lace untied - just keep moving, tie it later.

  Rebecca had one more obstacle between her and the safety of home. The dreaded walk to the bike rack. Once you were out in the yard, away from school faculty, it was every kid for themselves. Rebecca lived a few miles away from school. The first few days her mother had made her take the bus back and forth, but that was worse than prison. It locked her up with no place to run, allowing the other kids 30 uninterrupted (and mostly unrefereed) minutes to torture her at will. So she begged her mother for permission to ride her bike instead.

  In her peripheral vision she spotted Jeff and Tommy creeping like two evil henchmen, eager to play their favorite game. Her heart sank as they pulled up right behind her.

  "Watch out, she's mental," Tommy said.

  "I hear she had to go to a brain doctor," Jeff said, returning serve.

  "Yeah, they opened her head, but they couldn't find nothin! Ta doosh!" Tommy's laugh was filled with evil. Rebecca ignored their barbs and kept walking the endless path to the bike rack.

  But Tommy wanted some tears. He hopped forward on one foot and gave Rebecca's backpack a shove, knocking her face-down onto the sidewalk. Rebecca caught herself just before she kissed the ground — scraping up her hands a bit, but otherwise okay. Tommy hadn't intended to use so much force, but didn't apologize either. Instead he raised his hand in a victory dance.

  Rebecca stayed down, hoping they were satisfied, having gotten their humiliation. They stood over her, cackling and high fiving like their team just scored a goal.

  Holly Schmidt, another regular victim of the evil duo's barbs just for her name alone, stood over Rebecca, eyeballing the two hyenas. Holly was very tall for her age, heavy.

  "Leave her alone!" Holly screamed at the top of her lungs.

  "Holy shit, it's Holly Schmidt!" They sang in harmony. A parent walking with their child saw the commotion and approached. Tommy spit in Rebecca's hair as they jogged away.

  Holly offered her hand to help, but Rebecca was too embarrassed to do anything but get up and out of there as quickly as possible. She brushed past Holly, unlocked her bike from the rack, tossed the lock in her front basket and climbed on her bike.

  She didn't get 10 feet when the chain broke, sending her pedals spinning out from under her little, white sandaled feet. She lost control and found herself face down for the second time in only a few minutes. All around her, merciless child laughter.

  She got back up without dusting herself off, defiantly marching her bike down the street, not looking back. Her elbow burned, blood oozing through her sweater sleeve.

  Along the route home was an opening in a fence that led to a wooded area. It cut a direct path to her street that would have shaved about 10 minutes off her trip, bypassing the bridge over Route 101, and the big round about at Redwood Drive. Many of the kids used it. She saw people jogging in there from time to time. She didn't know if Jeff or Tommy used the path to go home, but that wasn't what she was afraid of.

  The place gave Rebecca an overwhelming sensation of dread whenever she approached. She always picked up the pace double time to hurry past it, as if whatever dark evil lurking deep within the trees was going to reach out to grab her if she walked too slow. She didn't know why it scared her, but the butterflies in her stomach swarmed when she got close, similar to how she felt just before the spells came over her.

  CHAPTER 8

  Laura held the phone away from her ear and shook it, her face contorting with frustration. She exhaled contempt for the person on the other line as she lifted the phone back up again, regaining her composure.

  "I'm not going to discuss it anymore." She took a deep drag from her cigarette and pulled back the blin
ds to look out the front window. She saw Rebecca dragging her wounded bike, slamming it onto the lawn. "No, I didn't get it," she said, distracted. "Bullshit."

  Laura stabbed out her cigarette in an ashtray on the windowsill. "Yeah, well, what you say and what you do are two totally different things."

  Rebecca kicked open the front door and made a beeline for the staircase. Laura followed behind. "I gotta go," she said, pressing the button to end the call. She followed Rebecca to the staircase and watched her disappear around the corner.

  "Hey, where've you been? I was worried sick!" Laura heard Rebecca's bedroom door close with a bang. "Becca?" Laura climbed the stairs. She reached for the handle, pausing a moment to calm down, still pissed off from the phone call. She reminded herself how Rebecca need not suffer for her mistakes. For all she knew, the drama and betrayal that sliced their family up the middle was the cause of poor Rebecca's night terrors.

  Laura slowly entered the room. Rebecca was seated in the center before a large, white easel. On it, a half finished canvas painting of the maple tree growing outside her window. Adorning every empty space of wall in her room were crooked, hastily tacked up works of art, each one a glorious masterpiece, amazingly detailed. A true prodigy if there ever was one.

  Along the floor was an assortment of canvasses, empty bottles of paints, brushes, charcoal pencils. Laura spent a good portion of the wages from her part time supermarket job on Rebecca's expensive art hobby. How could she not? It also kept her quiet. Rebecca never suffered any outbursts while she was occupied with her art. Perhaps the outlet for her expression released those troubling emotions in a more sane and civilized way. Without it, she exploded, especially when immersed in the dull, confining routines of elementary school.

  The sun was setting outside, casting a warm orange glow through the room. Rebecca dipped her thin bristled brush into a jar of water. She dabbed it, then dipped it into a jar of green paint, scraping and poking the glass to utilize the last remnants.

  Laura loved to watch. She offered no explanation for Rebecca's gift. There wasn't anyone in her family she could trace the artistic gene back to. It was a mystery. A miracle.

  Laura wasn't particularly religious, she never took Rebecca to church or felt the need to hand down any family traditions as there weren't any in her family growing up. But she was convinced that if there was a God he was speaking through Rebecca's artwork.

  Laura gazed around at the growing collection on the walls. Rebecca's art mostly consisted of still lifes, inanimate objects. There was one of herself that she wasn't particularly fond of, mainly because Rebecca had very accurately captured the wrinkles beginning to form around her eyes. The portrait made her look angry. Rebecca painted it one night after Laura scolded her for not eating her dinner. She remembered feeling self conscious upon seeing it a few days later, wondering if she really looked like that. That one could go, she thought.

  "You okay, sweetie?" As expected, she got the silent treatment. "That's really beautiful, what you're doing there."

  "Bike's broken," Rebecca said. Laura frowned on one side of her mouth.

  "That old bike was broken when I rode it. I'll get you a new one, I promise."

  Laura spotted green chewing gum had somehow gotten tangled in Rebecca's hair. She'd have to cut it out. Little fucking bastards.

  Laura placed her hands on Rebecca's shoulders gently. "Pretty soon we'll have to open up a gallery for your collection."

  Rebecca turned abruptly to her. "Mom, why'd we have to come here?"

  "Rebecca—"

  "Everyone hates me here."

  "No they don't, sweetie." Rebecca turned back around and continued to paint. Laura sat down on Rebecca's bed and sighed, they'd had this conversation already. She'd tried before to explain the complications created when two parents separate, translating it into Rebecca's nine year old language. Laura didn't have a trade or a real profession. In order to make ends meet, they had no other choice but to move back to Lansing, into the old home she'd grown up in. Laura's father had recently passed, leaving the house to her. By default — not decree, she was his only offspring. The house harbored some tough memories for Laura, many she had worked hard to forget. But it was a roof over their heads for now. And the way things were going, probably for a long time.

  Rebecca had visited the house once before, when her grandfather was very ill. She remembered it smelled "yucky" and she was afraid to enter the room where her grandfather spent most of his day staring at the ceiling, writhing in pain. But curiosity won out and she eventually ventured inside. He broke the ice with a joke she didn't get, but he laughed, and the odd sound made her laugh too. Laura had stood outside the door with her hand on her mouth, trying to hide her own sobbing.

  Rebecca was very confused and asked her mother why she'd never met him before. Some things are just too complicated to explain was all Laura could come up with. A few weeks later he was dead. They hadn't returned since.

  Even though Rebecca was upset about leaving her friends in Livonia, she was actually quite excited to return to the house. She danced around when she realized her new bedroom was much larger than her old one. Her exuberance drowned out a lot of Laura's trepidation about being in "that place" again, and for a while Rebecca gave her the strength she needed to deal with the anguish of the last few months. Maybe they could make it, maybe they could be happy.

  But the joy was brief. It wasn't long before the night terrors started. Laura had expected Rebecca to have a strong negative reaction to the divorce and the subsequent domestic upheaval — but this wasn't normal.

  Then the school called, asking her to come down to discuss Rebecca's behavior in class. Laura was shocked when she heard some of the stories of what she'd done. The final straw happened during one outburst when Rebecca lashed out at a boy who'd approached her desk to ask to borrow a pencil. Rebecca screamed obscenities and smacked him hard across the cheek. The teacher described Rebecca's eyes at that moment as if she was a demon, possessed.

  Laura agreed to let that incompetent school psychologist sit with her daughter twice a week. He very quickly threw his hands up in frustration. Those sessions escalated to the hasty recommendation of Dr. Leonard Hellerman, Child Psychiatrist. At Laura's expense, of course.

  Not only was Dr. Hellerman also a failure, Laura blamed him for exacerbating the situation. Laura had heard enough these last few months, endured too many bullshit theories on Rebecca's "condition". Rebecca never knew a bad day in her life, as far as Laura was concerned. And Laura was all too familiar with what a bad day of childhood was like. She considered herself an authority on the subject, a purple heart veteran of domestic abuse. Sure, Rebecca's father had left them, but statistically speaking, these days that was more the norm than the exception. Nothing accounted for Rebecca's sudden, frightening metamorphosis from normal, well adjusted — even happy child, to the jittery, terrified, profanity spewing insomniac she had become. And while Rebecca mostly couldn't recall details from her nightmares, what she did describe was suffocating in its horribleness.

  Laura decided they needed to solve the problem in-house. Rebecca was her daughter; if she couldn't help her, perhaps no one could.

  Laura stood up from the bed and moved to Rebecca's side. She caressed Rebecca's red cheek with the back of her fingers. Rebecca let her.

  "Warm milk isn't doing the trick, so I brought home some herbal teas from work. Maybe we can try it, hmm? Try and get some sleep tonight?"

  "Mom?"

  "Yes, sweetie?"

  "Who is she?"

  "Who?"

  "The girl. The one the doctor was asking about? The one I talk about in my sleep? Carmen?"

  Laura's lips went tight, the question caught her off guard. She tugged at a loose thread in Rebecca's sweater. "No one." Rebecca seemed unsatisfied with that answer, but went back to her painting.

  "Rebecca, everyone has nightmares. Yours are just worse than most, that's all. But they'll pass. I promise." Laura kissed the top of Rebe
cca's head, embracing her, growing emotional.

  Her eyes landed on a framed photograph Rebecca kept on her dresser. There was Laura, her ex-husband Richard - tattooed and muscular, and Rebecca in the middle. All smiling, happier times. Rebecca had drawn a pink heart around the photograph. Laura allowed her to keep it out on display. She didn't want her own pain to become Rebecca's. He would always be her father.

  Laura stared at Rebecca's tiny face in the picture, Rebecca winking at the camera, something she did in virtually every photograph.

  "I'm sorry, baby. I screwed everything up, didn't I?"

  CHAPTER 9

  Jack had fallen asleep at his desk. The fluorescent lights blinded, like something sharp jabbing his brain. He winced, slowly lifting his head, a piece of paper stuck to his cheek peeled away.

  He looked down bleary eyed at his notes, the text started to move like tiny ants. He shook off the cobwebs, trying to pick up where he left off. His last thought had been the realization that he'd read the same sentence over and over. He dragged his palms down his face and leaned back in his chair, any attempt to continue would just be grinding metal. He rubbed his dark, swollen eyes.

  He felt each tick of the clock, each second wasted. On his desk was a stack of gruesome crime scene photographs, not for the faint of heart. Even Jack could only stare at them a brief moment before his stomach turned. Beside those was a single picture of Angelina. Her bright shining smile inspired and haunted him at the same time. He dreaded the day he would have to move her picture into the other pile. He pushed himself to continue.

  Harrington entered the office.

  "Victor's state appointed council threatened a harassment suit if he's questioned again without being formally charged."

  Jack turned to Harrington, holding up a report. "Take a look at these."