When We Were Mortals

by E. S. Mercer

  He tried to keep me in his grasp. “Eva, what man?”

  I ignored him.

  “Eva!" he said again.

  But I never did get to answer him.

  It was a woman’s voice calling out the name this time, as she shook me awake.

  “Eva,” she said, again in a very thick Romanian accent.

  My eyes, fighting to stay closed, popped open when she said the name again.

  “What did you just call me?” I asked the woman I now recognized as Lady Ksenia. She must have realized at that point that she was calling out the wrong name because she gathered herself and started messing with the cut on my foot.

  “I brought some ointment and bandages for your wound,” she said, quietly as she started dabbing around the cut. “Though I’m afraid we may have to sew this shut after all.”

  I looked at the woman I had first seen in the bar, a woman who originally seemed so confident and sure of herself.

  And now, she bowed to me as she made her exit to fetch the needle and string.

  “Please forgive me,” she offered. “I’ll return momentarily.” And I waited, desperately trying to remember the name she and the faceless man had just called me. It was right at the tip of my tongue; painfully so, but I could not for the life of me say it either with my mouth or my mind.

  “Constantine tells me your name is Anessa,” she offered, as she returned.

  A piece of information I don’t ever remember giving him. “It is,” I said, adjusting myself.

  She pulled a chair to the side of the bed, sat down and placed my foot gently on her knees. “Let me formally introduce myself,” she said stroking the top of my foot with a tender touch. She then wrapped a cloth dipped in essential oils around my foot and continued, “my name is Lady Ksenia and I lead these travelers.”

  She pulled the oil drenched cloth and replaced with a piece of ice to numb the area.

  As I winced from the burn of the cold, she offered more about herself, without even batting an eye.

  “We spend our days doing all the work others don’t want to do. Running taxis, bike messengers, errand boys...” I couldn’t hear the rest under the pillow I had just thrown on my head to muffle the screaming. She never even warned me the needle was going into my foot. But she finally realized I wasn’t listening and finished sewing up my wound in silence. As the bandage went on, I started breathlessly asking questions.

  “So, you guys just live here then?” I asked, as I sat myself back up. “You like living in abandoned old buildings?” She poured me a glass of whiskey from the bedside liquor table and answered with a stone straight face. “It’s what we’ve always known,” she answered. “And,” she continued handing me the glass. “If you care to join us, you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I responded. “I was actually trying to find a way to leave town.” She sat down on the bed next to me, reaching up to gently push the hair behind my right ear and leaned in towards my cheek. “And where do you plan on going?” she asked.

  I could feel the movement of her plump lips on the nerve endings under my skin.

  “I, I..don’t know.” I stuttered. I couldn’t tell if she was coming on to me or not, but whatever she was doing worked because I found myself feeling conflicted. I wasn’t sure if I was getting uncomfortable or a little bit excited about the attention.

  “Then why don’t you stay here,” she offered. “You can’t go anywhere in this condition anyway.” I couldn’t help at this but point to watch every movement her lips made as she spoke or took a sip out of her whiskey glass. I mean, who wouldn’t! They were thick and luscious with a slight downward curve from years of not smiling, which made them that more attractive. Her tongue would hit her teeth so seductively every time she said a word with the letter L in it. It was distracting to say the least and again, I didn’t hear a word she was saying.

  “I’m sorry, what?” I asked, trying to get back into the conversation. She chuckled, as she shook her head and put her glass in the sink. “Stay, stay until you get better or decide what you want to do. We are in no hurry to make you leave.”

  I scooted towards the end of the bed so I could walk her out. I followed her to the door, asking if she could help me get on my feet by offering me a job. Whatever cash I could earn would make it so much easier to get out of this place.

  This time, she leaned in and kissed me gently on the lips.

  “Take this time to heal,” she said, as she backed away. “There’s no need to be in such a hurry to leave this place.”

  She winked at me and shut the caravan door gently in my stunned face.

  Chapter II

  After that night, it was impossible to get close to Ksenia. She sauntered in and out of her loft with a different lady each week, winking at me as she walked by – never giving me a moment to talk. It was the way she flaunted her behavior in front of me; it made me feel as if she was trying to show me how popular she was. As if I needed a reason to worship or be envious of her.

  I don’t know why it bothered me the way it did, but I found myself jealous and eerily upset. I had no interest in her in ‘that way.’ As far as I knew, I was never prone to having feelings for another woman. I even tried questioning it right then and there... and nothing.

  Occasionally, I found myself having a ‘stalker’ moment, where I would sit on the little porch of my caravan and watch her and all those she interacted with. What I observed was that she never really allowed anyone to get close to her. The women that she surrounded herself with, she interacted with on a superficial level. Many of them spent no more time with her than what it took to get dressed, once she kicked them out of bed. If she did keep them around longer it was usually because she enjoyed them enough to go for a second or third round before making them disappear.

  They were never from the District. Her charm, almost magical, seemed to work very well on the wealthy or accomplished. These women opened themselves up to her, paying her with gifts and favors that always seemed to benefit the community at large.

  She only made herself available to her people for a short hour each week. It was usually on a Monday morning, as she supervised the passing out of the job assignments and pretended to listen to any formal complaints. To solve any of the problems she was presented with seemed beneath her and she would pass the job off on one of the ‘elders’, or rely on the people to solve it themselves.

  If it was a major problem, she would send her manservant Constantine to deal with it. He was the one she held closest to her. The only one she truly allowed in. They attempted to hide the relationship between the two of them, but it became more obvious to me as the weeks went on. She treated him more like royalty than the help and he spent every waking moment serving her as if he had vowed a blood debt. There was a deep seeded love between the two of them, but watching them together, I never got the impression it was romantic.

  And then there was me, the one she seemed to purposely ignore. I wanted so badly to meet with her for just a moment and explain to her how grateful I had been for the roof over my head and the food that always found its way into my camper, but she never gave me a chance.

  I felt stuck. I was grateful for everything, but I had the most biting urge to move on. Even with the hospitality and acceptance I had received from everyone in the camp, I felt like I just didn’t truly belong. I had to find my place in the world, a place where I could do better and more important things.

  After three weeks of trying to get in touch with her, I gave up and went after her most trusted confidant. “Please Constantine,” I asked the grizzly old man one day. “My foot has healed enough to allow me to get to work. Put me somewhere and let me earn a living.”

  He scurried down the crowded path between campers, desperately trying to ignore me.

  “Please Constantine!” I exclaimed, pulling at his worn leather coat. “You gotta talk to her for me!”

  “Ugh,” he responded, with a dee
p and throaty sigh, “she doesn’t want you working outside these walls.” He stopped what he was doing long enough to turn around and burden me with a heavy load of medical supplies he was about to hand out. “This is how you can help and earn your keep,” he said, pulling a couple from my arms so I could see.

  “I don’t want to earn my keep!” I barked a bit irritated. “I want to earn enough to get out of the Poison District!” Constantine stopped again and growled as he turned to look at me. He was a man of very little patience and I could tell I was testing what little he had. He took a deep breath, running his fingers through his beard as if to try and calm himself down a bit.

  “Anessa, listen to me. I can’t tell you what you can and cannot do. You’re a grown woman…” he paused, pulling the stack out of my arms, handing it to one of the women who had been eavesdropping on our conversation. He nodded at her to leave and pulled me aside. “For some reason, you’re very important to her. She keeps going on and on about how you’re something special and it is her duty to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?” I asked, as I pulled my arm out of his grasp. “And if I am so special, why haven’t I seen her in weeks?”

  “Look,” he continued. “My daughter has better things to do than to worry about the things that go on in our everyday lives.” I couldn’t help but notice the way he was playing with his fingers while he spoke. This confession of his, which had first gone in one ear and out the other, made him uncomfortable. “She provides for us in a way that we could never live without.”

  “Wait, wait a minute,” I blurted. “Back up!”

  I stepped in closer. “She’s your daughter?”

  “Shhhh,” he said, as he realized what he had divulged. “Come with me.”

  “Why?” I asked, intrigued.

  He pulled me into an empty tent and sat me down. “Whatever you do, please do not repeat what I just said.” “What? That she thinks I am important?” I asked, with a wink. “No, that she’s…” he realized at that moment I was making a joke of it and decided to drop it. “Nevermind,” he said, shaking his head and trying to get back to the topic. “The point is you won’t see her unless she wants you to see her. And your complaints, which she cares very little about, go against her orders.”

  I sat for a second, a bit confused. I would think if I were convinced my guest was ‘special,’ I would treat them with a little more consideration than this. And for a second, I felt that Constantine was more scared to take my request to her than anything and he wasn’t speaking for her as much as for himself.

  “That is fine,” I said, getting up out of the oversized cushion. “If you won’t bring my issues to her, I will find a way do it myself!”

  “Just please,” he begged as he grabbed a hold of me. “Just please give me time to talk to her!”

  He stood silent for a moment, looking down at the dirt floor as he kicked a couple stones around with his feet.

  I found myself kicking a stone back to him, getting lost in the moment.

  “Excuse me sir,” a voice said from the door of the tent.

  "Yes Zara,” he responded, glancing over at the gorgeous little button of a girl who stood waiting for him. Her long brown hair, twisted in a dreadlock or two, slapped against her leg as she whipped around to look back from the tent, obviously disturbed by the sounds she could hear behind her. You could hear the growls of a man whose frustration was amplified by the clumsiness of someone who had just dropped a load of dirty pots and pans.

  “My Papa needs you,” she said, flinching ever so slightly with each word the man yelled in Romanian. Zara’s father was the cook, Cappi; a man who wore his years of drinking and smoking cigars on his dark and leathery skin. The wrinkles he donned were like rings in a tree trunk; they showed each year he lived in abundance, and by the look of him, he was no younger than eighty. A man with a temper that was well known in the camp. The only thing he loved was his kitchen, food, his six wives and all fourteen of his extremely beautiful daughters.

  Zara, being the youngest and the only child of his youngest and sixth wife, was the only one who remained at his side. She was the only one of his children who ever understood him and the only one he would never allow to leave him or the camp. Loyalty to the grumpy old man was a rare thing and he wouldn’t allow it to get away.

  Constantine knew that if he did not follow her to the kitchen quickly, his tantrum would only get worse. He had known Cappi a very long time and like Zara, had the gift of understanding the poor man.

  “Stay here,” Constantine said to me, pointing to the seat next to me.

  “Why?” I asked in a huff. “Just let me go with you.”

  I started to walk out the tent with them when Zara shook her head to deter me.

  “Stay here,” she said, in an adorable mousy little voice. “Papa don’t like strangers in the kitchen.” “Why doesn’t anyone let me do anything around here,” I muttered to myself as I plopped down on the oversized pillow. “I am so freaking bored!!!!”

  “I hear you were looking for me?” Ksenia announced as she entered the tent, standing a bit cocky and sucking on a peppermint candy cane. I could hear the candy clack against her teeth every time she would put it back in her mouth, as if a hammer had broken through a piece of glass. It plucked at nerves that had already reached their maximum annoyance level.

  “Are you done with that yet?” I asked abruptly as I stood up to address her.

  “Why? Is it bothering you?” she asked as she came close to me, leaning in and sticking the candy cane back in her mouth. “Um, yeah, just a bit.” I responded, as I could now smell the peppermint on her warm breath. Her lips were way too close to mine. “And I have been trying to talk to you for weeks,” I continued. “I have a lot to say.”

  “Then talk,” she responded petulantly backing off. “I have stuff to do.”

  Her mood changed quickly when she realized that I wanted to deal with serious matters.

  I opened the tent and looked towards her room.

  “Got another conquest up there do ya?” I asked sarcastically, closing the curtain and turning towards her.

  “You jealous?” she shot back, pushing past me and out the tent.

  “No, I am not jealous,” I answered defensively. “I’m bored!”

  She whipped herself around and threw her candy cane in the fire.

  “So what?” she asked, “Is boredom really so bad in the scheme of things?” She started towards her loft. “Trust me, things could be a lot worse.”

  “Worse than dying of boredom?” I responded. “You vexatious infant,” she blurted, grabbing my hand and dragging me up the stairs to her loft. “See this?” she asked as she drew back the curtains. From her vantage point, you could see the entire camp. “How can you be bored when you are part of this?”

  “Part of what?” I inquired. “Are you saying you think I belong here?”

  “Well don’t you?” she answered. “Who says you don’t? Tell me and I’ll set them straight.” “No one, I just…” I hesitated, sitting down on the closest seat I could find, never even noticing the very naked, middle aged blonde lounging on the chair behind me. “I really need to do something outside these walls. I didn’t escape one prison to be locked into another one.”

  “You aren’t a prisoner,” Ksenia assured me, scooting me over so she could join me, “I just don’t think it’s safe for you outside these walls. When you got here, you seemed a bit confused.”

  “I wasn’t confused,” I disputed. “I was free!”

  "You were confused!" she argued. “You had no idea who or what you were.”

  “You have said over and over again that you don’t believe you were ever Melody!” She got up and ran her fingers through her hair, pulling at the ends and grunting. “You can’t go into a world with no memory of who you are and think you can survive like that! Someone needs to save you from this idea of needing something more.”

  “I am sure people do it all the time!” I barked, sho
oting up off my seat. “There is something calling me away from this place,” I said as I started pacing the edges of the worn oriental rug beneath me.

  It was then that I finally noticed the blonde. “Why don’t we finish this conversation later,” I decided as I started walking towards the stairs. “Just know that I am leaving these walls and since you won’t give me one, I’ll go find a job myself.”

  "And you know what?” I added as I turned around. “I’m not some scared little girl who needs saving!” I could feel myself getting irritated. “I am lost, yes! I am trying to figure out who I am and what I am doing here! I woke up one day and ran from a life that made no sense to me. That doesn’t mean I needed you to save me!”

  Ksenia’s irritation quickly faded. “Look,” she said, catching up to me. “I used the wrong words.” She adjusted herself and continued, ”I am not trying to save you, I am trying to help you.”

  She looked worried for a second and even slightly scared. “By controlling me and what I do?” I questioned. “No! This town is not a place to be lost in. Please believe, I’m only trying to help!” she pleaded.

  I walked down a couple stairs and then stopped again. “I appreciate everything you are doing; giving me a place to stay and food to eat.” I turned and looked at her. “But someday I will need to move on and I need to find a way to do that. Give me a job so I can earn the money to do that. That is how you can help!”

  She looked over at her lover who was now patiently waiting under a blanket and then walked over to me. Her body language was again flirtatious, as she ran her fingers through my hair, allowing her hips to lightly touch mine. “I,” she started as she leaned closer into me.

  “I don’t understand what this is,” I said, locking eyes with her. Call it intuition or the clarity of realizing I wasn’t gay, but I could feel that her antics were more than what she let on. “This,” I said as I pointed back and forth to both of us, “this is unnecessary with me.”

  I reached up and put my hand on her cheek. Pulling her down to my level and kissing her gently on her lips. “Whatever this is goes way beyond your sexuality. It is a need to feel fulfilled when all you feel is completely empty and barren of true feelings and emotions.”