Awakened Love

by Skyler Andra

  My temples tightened and I rubbed them. I hated hospitals. They reminded me when my grandma slipped into a diabetic coma and died.

  I checked on Mads’ cord again, sensing he was close. If that were the case, I was entering his traumatic memory, not my own. Something told me it wasn’t going to be pretty. Mads brushed people off with a joke, but beneath it lay someone in pain.

  Judging by the décor decked out in a kind of industrial green tile, we were about ten years ago in style. The nurse on duty, who never glanced up as I went by, frowned as if she were one shift away from committing some kind of felony. Sadness and tension clung to the air. Some people in here waited to die, feared they might be told they were going to die, or were in so much pain that it didn’t matter to them either way.

  A chill trickled down my spine, and I stopped. Over by the wall sat a teenage boy in a plastic chair, his blond hair falling into his face, his hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his hoodie. His clothes looked in desperate need of a wash and some sewing to repair tears. With a face that said, ‘fuck off world,’ he kicked angrily at the floor in front of him.

  Oh no, come on, that can’t be…

  Of course it was. Mads at eleven or so. The Mads I knew was about my age, give or take a year, held a kind of elegant strength that made me think of dancers and swimmers. The younger version was so whipcord-thin that I winced. He had that kind of nervous energy that came from being exhausted from doing nothing, and at any moment, it looked like he was going to burst.

  “Hey,” I said cautiously, approaching him. “Mads?”

  He didn’t look up, and after trying a few more times, I realized that he couldn’t hear me. Dammit. If I was just a ghost in this world that could make things pretty difficult. Before I could figure out what I was going to do about that a door opened and a nurse stepped out of the room.

  “You can come in now, but just for a little while,” she said with as much enthusiasm for Mads as a speck of dust. “She’s going to get tired pretty soon and after that you have to go, alright?”

  Mads scowled in a way that made him look a little older. Seeing him at this age was strange. I mean, he was recognizably the same person, but the man I knew grinned all the time, never cared much about anything, and had never gotten invested in a single thing.

  Heart heavy, I followed him into the tiny room cut in half by a fluttering curtain, a baseball announcer’s voice droning in the background.

  Mads glanced at the TV with irritation. “I’ll go tell him to turn it down,” he said to a woman in bed.

  She waved it away. “He’ll just turn it up again anyway. I don’t mind.”

  I put a hand to my mouth when I caught sight of the bones protruding from this poor woman. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, the skin of her face drawn tight enough to make her look like a skull. Beyond that I noticed the resemblance straight away. Blond hair and vivid green eyes. When she smiled, it had that same hint of warmth that crept into Mads’ grin from time to time.

  What happened to you? Why is Mads here?

  My answer came shortly after my question.

  Mads drew a battered wooden chair besides the woman’s bed, letting her hold his hand and stroke his hair.

  “How’s school, honey?” she asked, her voice tired and drawn.

  “Fine, it’s good.” He glanced at his lap. “I got an A on my history test.”

  She made an approving noise, but I frowned, seeing straight through his lie. He might fool his mother, but he still had a lot of practice before he became knew the avatar of the god of thieves and liars.

  What are you doing when you should be in school, Mads?

  Mads and his mother talked a little more until he pulled some cash out of his pocket. The kind of cash a rich dude at a restaurant might pull out to impress his girl. Way too much for a middle school kid to be carrying around, especially one who looked as poor as Mads.

  “Mama, here.” He shoved the money into his mother’s hand, curling her fingers over. “I got a bonus at work. Can you put this into the account, or maybe have Sarah do it?”

  A cloud crossed over his mother’s face. “Where did you get this? You deliver newspapers, for heaven’s sake.”

  Ouch. You’ve really improved at lying, haven’t you?

  “I worked every shift this week,” he insisted. “I looked after things…”

  “You stole this.” His mother’s voice trembled with sorrow and fury, but the strain in her mouth said she was too tired to maintain it.

  Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, and for a moment, she convinced me that she might try to sit up. He yelped, but then she fell back against the pillows, looking grayer and smaller than she had a moment ago.

  “Don’t,” she said miserably. “Mads, please don’t. You can’t.”

  “It’s a bonus,” he maintained stubbornly, too young to realize that when you get caught in a lie you really should admit it.

  His mother’s stern eyes landed on him. “I didn’t raise you to be a thief.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have fucking got sick!”

  I recoiled from the sheer rage shaking in Mads’ voice. It didn’t matter that his voice broke on the last word. This was the kind of anger to dissolve into tears in a heartbeat, and I wanted to go to him, tell him to let it go. If only he knew how his grief pushed him into saying things he would regret forever. I reached out to touch him, as if I could hold him back.

  “Mads!” his mother cried in outrage.

  “You don’t know what it’s like!” he shouted. “Everything’s falling apart with you! Dad can’t cope. Why can’t you just…”

  His mother reached for him, and I was struck by how lovely her hands were. Mads’ hands. Strong and elegant, they could brush away his pain, comfort him, love him to the end of the world.

  Oh, Mads…

  “What am I supposed to do if you won’t take the damn money?” he asked, pulling back.

  “Darling, there’s nothing you can do,” her voice trailed off.

  She coughed, her color changing from awful to a terrible pallid in the space of a moment. Her chest wracked, her lungs doing their best to clear, her eyes begging for air.

  The man behind the curtain in the next bed cursed at them both for their noise.

  Mads frantically punched the call button.

  A minute later two nurses rushed in, and as they tried to get his mother stabilized, they pushed him out.

  “She’s going to be fine; she’s just overextended,” said the nurse who had let him in initially. “You should go. She’s always so rough after company.”

  Mads bared his teeth at the nurse, then bolted down the hall so quick that I could barely keep up with him. No amount of calling out to him stopped him. When I flung open the door, I expected to encounter the hospital’s atrium. Instead, I stepped into a grungy convenience store—the kind that local people in the neighborhood tend to use as a grocery store. A commotion roused at the front. I crept along the aisle and flinched when I rounded the row of candy. There was Mads, as skinny and young as he had been at the hospital, standing in front of the counter, a gun in his hands.

  “Give me your damn money,” he snarled, sounding like a kid who should have been playing video games rather than robbing a store.

  “Alright,” warbled the woman behind the counter, shaking like a leaf. “Just don’t do anything crazy.”

  She turned to the cash register, still watching Mads out of the corner of her eye. He shook as much as she did, and the gun in his hand jittered more than I was comfortable with. Slowly she removed a wad of notes. When he stepped forward to snatch the money, she twisted, smashing his hand and causing the gun to fly from his grasp. Mads scrambled to pick it up, but when he stood up again, he stared down the barrel of a shotgun.

  “No!” I screamed.

  “Get on the goddamn ground!” she shouted.

  My throat locked up because Mads didn’t have much of a choice at that point. I didn’t bla
me the woman at all; she was protecting her livelihood and he was just a messed-up kid desperate to save his sick mother. Gun trained on him, she pressed a button beneath the counter, leading to the cops showing up ten minutes later. Bitter tears streamed down his grimy face as the cops hauled him out of the store.

  My heart broke for him.

  The scene changed again, and now I stood in front of Mads, who had his hands cuffed and was hunched over in misery in another plastic chair in the police station hallway.

  Fury boiled inside of me. Couldn’t they see he was only a kid?

  I kneeled before him unsure of what else to do. He jumped a little when I laid a hand on his back. I blinked.

  “Wait, can you feel me?” I asked.

  I didn’t get an answer. A large man with a detective’s badge arrived to talk to Mads. His words came out jumbled as if he spoke with a mouthful of marbles. Everything in this scene passed through Mads’ memory. He didn’t remember the words, just had the sense of them, but I knew it was terrible.

  According to the detective, they were throwing Mads into a stint at juvie before his case could be heard because of his stunt in the convenience store.

  Mads hung his head. Did he know how much he had fucked up?

  I wanted to push the man back from him, but he’d finished and walked away before I could act.

  Mads buried his face in his hands.

  I wrapped my arms around him. He felt even smaller than he looked, and to my surprise, he leaned against me.

  “You showed up,” he muttered.

  “You could tell I was here the entire time?” I asked.

  “Yup,” he responded after some time.

  “You know I hate being ignored.”

  He smiled a little at my retort. “Even if I’m bound and determined to act like an ass, it’s still good always nice to see my mother.”

  My heart cracked some more at the dullness in his voice telling me he lost her shortly after that memory.

  “Mads…” I started.

  But he raised a hand and shook his head. “I like the next part a lot better.”

  The ground lurched and the world twisted again into a crowded scene. I nearly threw up from the intensity of the spinning disturbance. Where the hell had he taken me?

  Chapter 15

  Locke

  I smelled smoke, alcohol, and way too much cologne. Music pounded in the dark, the vibrations trembling up through my feet. The whole club, packed to the brim with people wearing far too little clothing, pushed me forward and I nearly fell on my face.

  “Oh come on!” I shouted upon catching sight of the skirt I was wearing. It was barely more than a belt really, and my sparkly silver top had a neckline only just holding my breasts in. This kind of thing would have made me blush back in college, when you know, I’d been making a ton of very questionable clothing choices. More than anything, the four inches heels pissed me off most because I really didn’t need the discomfort right now. I thought about kicking them off, but when I got a look at the filthy club floor, I decided that that was probably a bad idea.

  Mads, I have every sympathy for everything that happened to you, but I really would like to know why we’re in some kind of Eurotrash club right now where someone is actually doing coke at the bar. Oh god.

  My feet ached as I tottered around the place, discovering it was bigger than at first glance. A sea of bodies writhed to the rhythm as I searched for Mads. One guy draped an arm over my shoulder and I shoved him off, wondering whether I’d be arrested for committing bodily harm against someone who did not exist.

  Seriously, I thought he had better taste than to spend time at this kind of party.

  At the back of the club, I found private areas and half-curtained dens where apparently you could do whatever you liked, provided you liked having semi-public sex. Confronted with more bouncing breasts and hairy legs than I thought possible, I issued an impatient sigh and continued to search the other booths.

  Goddamn, Mads. The things I do for love.

  By the time I got to the final room, my back and feet hurt from the heels, my head ached from the music, and I was about ready to smack the next dude who touched me. That was, of course, until I found Mads inside with not one, but two people. Pressed between a gorgeous slender dark-haired woman on one side, and a bigger, bulkier man on the other. Neither of them could keep their hands off of him, and he turned from one to the other lazily, kissing each set of lips offered.

  “Make yourself useful and bring us some more Dom Pèrignon,” the woman cooed in Mads’ ear. Amazingly I heard it as if it were whispered in my own.

  “Anything else, princess?” Mads asked, holding the man’s head as he kissed his neck.

  “Take me to Club Fantasia tomorrow,” she said, brushing hair over her shoulder. “Modeling scouts will there, and I need to be seen.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “The pleasure of walking in with the hottest girl in the club.”

  Storm clouds swept across his face and he pulled away from her, brushing off the man too. “What if I’m busy?”

  “C’mon, baby.” She ran manicured hands over his chest. “Please?”

  “What about your agency, haven’t they got tickets?”

  “You’re the only one who can get me in. And to thank you, I’ll give you a blow job in the men’s.”

  Mads grit his teeth. “Is that the only reason you hang out with me?”

  She smiled seductively. “That and you’re good in bed.”

  Ouch. No wonder this was another of his hellish memories. Woman fawning over him for what they could get from him. Despite that, I had to admit the orgy aspect looked like fun, but I didn’t have time to waste in this place.

  Losing my patience, I shouted above the music, “Alright, everyone out!”

  They protested a bit, but when they saw how serious I was, they both headed for the hills. They probably thought I was some jealous girlfriend, and in a way I was, but whatever let me get Mads out of here faster worked for me.

  He gazed at me with a faint smile on his face. “You know, you could have joined in whenever you wanted.”

  I glared at him. “Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. How many people have fucked on that mattress in the last twenty-four hours?”

  “Eh, they change the sheets.” He laced his fingers and tucked his hands behind his neck, leaning back into the sheets. “What do you want, Locke? This is the first time I’ve seen you here. Is this some kind of new weird thing that Hell provides?”

  “Wait,” I glanced around. “Do you think I’m not real?”

  “No more than any of the rest of this is,” he said, shrugging.

  “So you know that this is all a fake? And you’re just going along with it?”

  “I have for the last hundred or so iterations.”

  I wiped my sweaty hands down what little clothes I had. The poor bastard had gone through that scene with his mom, the convenience store and the cops, and this place more than a hundred times.

  “Come here,” he said with a sigh, stretching an arm towards me. “Let’s make the most of your time here.”

  I detected an odd degree of neediness behind his words as if he thought me the next level of torment in this hellhole.

  I’ll be damned if I wasn’t proof against his loneliness. I crawled onto the mattress with him, settling into the curve of his arm. A sense of urgency prodded at the back of my mind, telling me I needed to get Mads and Rane away from all this, but I just wanted to be with him, to bring him a moment of peace from this place.

  “So what’s all this?” I asked finally.

  He laughed. “Um, a break from reliving the worst times of my life?”

  “I don’t think this place gives breaks, Mads. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on,” he snapped, the harshness in his tone telling me he was hiding something from me.

  I tried another tactic. “When did Hermes choose you?”

  Mads glanc
ed at me with some amusement. “You’re remembering everything that I fibbed about, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe, yeah.” I poked him, searching for ticklish spots and answers because he’d always been more than a little cagey about his past. His body tensed at one spot on his side.

  From the scenes I’d witnessed, I got the idea that his stealing and lying, among other things, impressed Hermes. But frankly, he hadn’t been that impressive as a kid thug, and must have spent a few more years honing his skills before the god came knocking.

  Mads nuzzled the top of my head. “Hermes came to me when I was fourteen and on the verge of another really dumbass thing. Right after they put my dad in prison.” He tipped his head back and sucked in a sharp breath.

  I placed a hand on his, hoping it could help sooth the confusion and chaos in his mind. “So, you were never that good at it before?”

  Mads laughed almost pitifully and squeezed my arm. “Go ahead and rub it in, why don’t you?”

  I sat up and gazed at him in the dim light. “You weren’t going to save her with money from your bank robberies, you know.”

  Mads’ face darkened with a dangerous and desperate rage. The kind that made good men do terrible things.

  “Back off. I don’t ask you why you love to chase after violent assholes who’ve killed people or professors who bribed people, do I?”

  Whoa. Talk about a spike to the heart designed to wound me. His barbed words might have worked if he were actually on top of his game. But at his heart, he was still the incredibly clumsy kid who thought his mom would actually believe his stories.

  “Oh, I know why I like Rane and Byron,” I said with a slight smile. “And I know why I like you too you know.”

  He pushed away from me, sitting with his back facing me. “Because I’m good in bed?” His taunting words were directed at himself more than anything.

  I tilted my head at him. “Don’t be stupid, dummy. You know I care for you too.”

  “Everyone likes me for what I can give them.”