Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  Andy asked, “Mr. Davenport, did you take any photos that day?”

  Max answered, “No. Not that day. Mary took most of our family photographs. She was real good that way…” He started crying again.

  Andy didn’t give up. He said, “OK, how about this one?”

  Again, the sound of newspaper pages being turned; then shook, probably to make the pages lie flat. Max said, “OK, now see here, peaches were on sale. Molly loved peaches. I’m sure Mary musta bought some for her during that sale.”

  Andy tried a logical approach. “But, see, you don’t know for sure. This newspaper is kind of creating a false memory for you. Why don’t we get rid of this one?”

  Max started to cry again. “No, not that one. It has peaches in it! It’s a connection for me with little Molly. You can’t take that away from me.”

  Andy said, “Speaking of Molly, where is she today? She couldn’t make it?”

  In between sobs, Max said, “No. She doesn’t come around much anymore. She’s pretty ungrateful. Broke her mom’s heart, she did.”

  We reached the end of the path Maggie had taken through the boxes. She seemed to know exactly where it led. We came out directly into the area where Andy and Max were talking. They were standing in a small oval area in what appeared to be the living room, completely encircled by enormous stacks of newspapers. It reminded me of photos I’d seen of soldiers hunkered down in the trenches in World War I, surrounded by piles of sandbags.

  Maggie said, “Hey, Dad, Jade needs to wash her hands. She ran into some of Squirtle’s poop. We’re gonna use the powder room next to the kitchen, OK?”

  In a shaky voice, her father replied, “OK. But don’t stay in there too long. You know I don’t like people in the kitchen area. It disturbs the way I have things arranged in there.”

  Maggie said, “Sure. I know that, Dad.”

  As we entered the kitchen, pain shot through my abdomen, on the lower right side. It was so severe, it felt like I’d been stabbed with a knife. Without thinking, I doubled over, grabbed my side, and moaned from the sudden agony of it.

  Max and Andy stopped talking.

  With worry in her voice, Maggie asked, “Are you all right?”

  I stayed crouched over for what felt like an eternity. Finally, the pain disappeared, evaporated into thin air. I straightened up, feeling embarrassed. First day in the field and I’d managed to behave unprofessionally. I couldn’t read Andy’s face to determine if he was shocked. He was looking at me without much of an expression.

  I answered, “Yeah, I’m fine. I just had a sudden sharp pain. Not sure what it was.”

  Maggie said, “I think you wiped Squirtle’s poop on your shirt.”

  Oh, damn. There was poop there all right! I felt super-annoyed, but worked hard to hide it. Man, Squirtle was the perfect name for that bird. A squirt here, a squirt there. Ugh.

  The kitchen stank so badly, I held my breath while we crossed through it. The smell of rotting food permeated the air.

  The bathroom was worse. I almost threw up. I fought really hard not to hurl. The toilet looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. Thin swirls of brown sludge lined the bowl. Orange mold ran along the inside rim. The seat was up, so I got a horrifyingly good look.

  The sink was so disgusting, I almost didn’t see the point in washing my hands. Black mold circled the drain.

  Maggie turned the faucets on for me. She said, “They stick sometimes.” Fumbling around on a shelf behind a striped curtain, she produced a bar of antibacterial soap and handed it to me.

  Placing my hands under the warm water calmed me. I lathered with soap and rinsed. I asked Maggie, “Do you have any paper towels or anything, so I can clean my shirt?”

  She rummaged around in the cabinet and came out with something even better than paper towels: Clorox Wipes! She said, “I bought these last week. I always keep some here.”

  After I cleaned the bird poop off my shirt, I looked around for a place to throw the wipes. I ended up adding them to a pile of garbage spilling out of a plastic can. They added disinfect smell to the putrid one monopolizing the air. Washing the Clorox off my hands, I wiped them on the back of my shirt to dry them.

  As we stepped into the kitchen, I suggested we join Maggie’s father and Andy.

  Max looked small and broken. I wondered who he’d been as a young man. He’d married. He and his wife had raised three children. His file said he’d been a painter, painting homes for income and artwork to fulfill his passion. I knew what it felt like to lose someone close to you. Losing my mom had broken me, but not completely. I was still young. I had my whole life ahead of me. Max did not.

  As we approached the men, Andy put down the newspaper he’d been trying to convince Max to throw away.

  I tried a different approach. I asked Max about his painting. I tried to imagine his home with a fresh coat of paint. It must have been a gorgeous house at one time. The living room was turquoise with a white ceiling, although the ceiling had taken on a gray tinge. The kitchen was yellow with the same color ceiling.

  Max said, “I haven’t been able to paint lately.”

  Andy, relentlessly pursuing his goal, said, “There’s no room to paint in here. Where are your paint brushes, anyway? Could you even find them?”

  Max replied, “Mary was my muse. It’s not the same now.”

  I asked, “Did you ever paint her? Ever do family portraits?”

  Max said, “Yes.” The look in his eyes was one of sheer torment.

  Maggie said, “Dad, would it be all right with you if I showed them your paintings?”

  Max said, “Sure, sure…” Then, anger rising up inside him, he shouted, “But don’t give any of them away, you hear me, Maggie? Those are never to be given away, even after I’m dead and gone! OK?”

  Placing her hand on her father’s shoulder, Maggie said, “Don’t worry, Dad. Those paintings mean a lot to me, too. Our family will always hold onto them.”

  Turning to me and Andy, Maggie said, “C’mon. The paintings are out in the barn.”

  Andy told me, “You go. I’ll stay here with Mr. Davenport.”

  Making our way through the maze of boxes to a back door, we exited into a huge backyard with a barn at the top of a grassy incline. I felt short of breath and had a throbbing pain in the lower right side of my abdomen as we hiked up to it.

  Unlocking a side door and flipping a switch, Maggie flooded the interior of the barn with light. This space was different than the interior of the house. There was room to walk. No piles of cardboard boxes. However, this was still a hoarder’s domain. The barn was filled with tables and the tables were piled high with stuff. There were all kinds of things hanging from the rafters: hoses and tools, blankets, deflated balloons, stained glass panels suspended from metal chains, canvas paintings on decorative ropes.

  Walking past quite a few tables, I noticed there seemed to be a theme for each. Piles of books on one, balls of yarn on another, a few tables filled with kids’ toys, others filled with machinery parts.

  Maggie took us to the far side of the barn. Several mannequins stood guard over wooden chests. The space had an eerie feel.

  Once again, pain shot through my abdomen. Sitting down on one of the chests and bending over my thighs, clutching my knees, I let out a scream. I started apologizing, but my words were swallowed up by torment. I managed to say, “I’m sorry…”

  Maggie said, “Don’t apologize. Can I do anything for you?” I felt horrified by my lack of professionalism. A client’s family member should not be tending to the Social Worker.

  As had happened in the kitchen, the pain stopped in an instant. Just like that. Taking over my mind and body like some alien creature, and then gone in the blink of an eye.

  I stood up. “I’m really sorry. I have no idea what just happened. I had another episode of stabbing pain, but it’s gone now. I’d love to see your dad’s paintings.”

  Taking the lid off a wooden box about five feet tall and two
feet wide, Maggie pulled out a large canvas painting. In it, five dogs were running around playing. Maggie said, “These are the dogs we owned when I was growing up.”

  I moved closer to inspect it. I commented, “I don’t see Lucky.”

  Maggie said, “Lucky’s new. My mom and dad got him at a shelter a few years ago.”

  All the dogs in the painting looked healthy and of normal weight. I asked, “Was Lucky always so thin?”

  Returning the canvas to the box and pulling out another one, Maggie said, “No. My dad needs help. He forgets where he put the dog food. Or he thinks he’s fed the dog when he hasn’t. His mind is completely clouded by losing my mother.”

  I asked, “Maggie, do you have any idea what might have happened to your mother?” I had a feeling that things weren’t exactly as they seemed, or her mother had met with some kind of tragedy. If she wasn’t dead, someone should have noticed her by now. Unless she had run away and was hiding from family. Or she had been kidnapped. Or she’d gotten lost in the woods or had a car accident and couldn’t remember who she was. Had this family hired a detective? How hard had they looked?

  Maggie said, “I don’t.” Tears streamed down her face. “I’ve offered to hire a detective, but my dad refuses to go along with that.”

  That shocked me, considering the pain in her father’s eyes. Chills ran up my spine. Had he done something to harm his wife, maybe killed her accidentally? I had an active imagination. I tried to put a lid on it. I said, “Why don’t you hire one, anyway? It’s best to look for a missing person as soon as possible before…” I didn’t finish the statement.

  Maggie said, “Look at this.” She flipped around the canvas she was holding.

  It was a middle-aged woman with gray hair and blue eyes. She had a band of pink flowers in her hair. The painting looked like one of those portraits where the eyes twinkled, but it was hard to make out the emotion. I interpreted it as mostly joy with hints of sadness. As I walked back and forth in front of the painting, the woman’s eyes followed me. What did she want? I felt that she expected something from me.

  Maggie pulled out a few more canvases. My favorite was an oil painting with thick layers of brightly colored paint showing a carnival in full swing. People wearing masks. Red scarves being pulled through the air like children’s balloons. Laughter. Dancing.

  We looked at other types of artwork her dad had made: ceramic pots, stained glass windows. He had been quite prolific.

  When we went back inside, I realized I had to pee.

  Locking myself in the bathroom, I tried to figure out how to use the toilet without getting an infection from gunk splashing up on me.

  I carefully lined the inside of the toilet bowl with toilet paper and floated some on top of the water.

  I had a horrible retching fit from the disgusting sight of the toilet and the smell of the bathroom through which I desperately tried not to throw up. I flung open the curtains to the storage shelves, grabbed the Clorox Wipes bottle, popped open the lid and took a whiff. It helped. Clutching the bottle to my chest, breathing in the antiseptic smell, I awkwardly unsnapped and unzippered my jeans with the other hand, tugged them down to my knees, then grabbed the elastic of my underpants and pulled them down an inch at a time. I yanked sheets of toilet paper off the roll and covered the seat. When I finally sat down, I couldn’t pee. I was too tense. I reached over and turned on the water. Visualizing waterfalls and me sitting next to them drinking copious amounts of coffee, I finally relaxed enough to urinate in bursts. When my bladder finally emptied, I stood up and flushed the toilet. Returning the Clorox Wipes to the shelf, I noticed something sparkling on a shelf. A woman’s wedding and engagement rings! I picked them up and inspected them. Inside the engagement ring there was an inscription: To you Mary, my eternal love. Max. I wondered: why would she have left those behind?

  I placed the rings back where I’d found them and snapped photos with my cell phone. Then I closed the curtains.

  When I reached the kitchen, pain stabbed me once again. Clutching the freezer handle on the refrigerator to steady myself, I accidentally pulled open the door.

  Maggie had entered the kitchen at exactly that moment. She covered her mouth with her hand and gasped. There in the freezer were vials of blood and yellow liquid that sure looked like urine.

  Max came in behind her. Oblivious to my pain, he shoved me aside and slammed the door shut. He shouted at me and Andy, “Get out of my house! You’ve invaded enough of my privacy!”

  Maggie asked her father, “What is that, Dad? Are those yours?”

  In a shocked voice, Max said, “No! Those are your mother’s. Those were her diabetes tests. It’s a living part of her. It’s all I have left, for God’s sake, Maggie!”

  7

  I spent the rest of my work week in the office, writing up a report on my visit to Max Davenport’s and reading case files on clients I’d be visiting with Andy the following week.

  When Saturday rolled around, I was exhausted. I slept until 11:00 AM. When I finally woke up, I stayed in bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets glued to my ceiling. I’d stuck them up there the year my mom agreed to let me paint my room dark blue with a black ceiling. I was thirteen at the time.

  I thought about the stabbing pains I’d experienced during my first field visit to a client’s home. On hindsight, I think I was using the same defense mechanism of denial my mother had used when she experienced early symptoms of ovarian cancer. They weren’t anything out of the ordinary: mild cramping, bloating, decreased appetite, needing to pee more often than she usually did.

  At first, she’d joked about the frequent need to pee, saying she had “old lady’s bladder.” I laughed every time she said it. Now, I felt tremendously guilty that I’d laughed.

  I did try to help her with the bloating. I suggested energy drinks and what I thought were healthy milkshakes made in the blender by mixing fruit, ice cream and milk for when she felt too full to eat solid food. She enjoyed them until she decided that all that liquid was making her pee more often and maybe the fruit was giving her gas. Her favorite was a banana-chocolate milkshake I made for her by blending bananas, vanilla ice cream, whole milk and chocolate syrup.

  I felt more humiliation than fear over my recent episodes with pain. I hoped they’d never return in a public place, and certainly never again at work.

  As I lay there, I explored the place where I’d felt the pain. There was definitely a lump in there! I felt the other side. It actually felt kind of the same, so I figured maybe it was a muscle. Or maybe my ovary? Could you feel your ovaries, or were they too small? I felt the problem side again. I couldn’t tell if there was a lump there or not, but I’d triggered the pain by pressing so hard.

  Owwwwww! I screamed bloody murder.

  As the pain lifted, I realized how quiet the house was and remembered that my dad was gone all day, helping a friend move into an apartment.

  I started thinking about the scene in Max Davenport’s kitchen. The vials of blood and urine in his freezer, how my pain had led me to that.

  New images formed in my head, things I’d ignored at the time. I was pretty sure there had been a mason jar filled with blood and another filled with urine in the freezer, in the back where the light wasn’t so good. Now that I thought about it, I felt I’d need to tell Andy about it. Would this need to be reported to the police?

  Also, there had been a door on the floor of the barn. I hadn’t thought about it much at the time. I’d thought of it as a door to the basement. But did barns have basements? I wanted to go back and ask Maggie to show me what her dad kept down there.

  Something lived in my abdomen, something that triggered pain as it tried to communicate important things to me. It had told me about the things in Max’s freezer. It had tried to tell me about the door in his barn.

  I had that bizarre thought, then worried I was going insane. I felt it more important than ever to locate my birth mom. I needed to know my genetics, in regard
to both physical health and mental health. What risk factors did I carry inside me like ticking time bombs waiting to go off?

  Hopping out of bed, I pulled on a pair of purple socks with unicorns sewn into the cuffs and went out to the kitchen to find something to eat. Dumping Shredded Wheat into a bowl, I hunted around in the fridge for fruit. In the back of the crisper drawer behind a head of lettuce and a shrink-wrapped package of mushrooms, I found a couple of peaches. I washed and peeled one, then sliced it into slivers. Placing those in a pinwheel shape on top of the cereal, I drowned everything in milk. Grabbing the bowl and a spoon, I carried breakfast back to my desk and turned on my computer.

  Today was the day I’d begin searching for my mom in earnest.

  I Googled “adoption finding birth mom.”

  My eyes quickly scanned the page. I felt overwhelmed. The Internet offered many different ways to go about this, with all kinds of services and people willing to help for a fee. Partway down the page, there was an article by someone who wished they’d never found their biological mom. I refused to read that, tried to pretend it wasn’t there.

  I got up and brushed my hair. Looking in the mirror, I felt disappointed by the image staring back at me. My long brown hair had more broken ends than shine. My eyes were dull brown with streaks of red in the white part. My stomach pain had been taking a toll.

  Grabbing the bowl of cereal and peaches, I took it over to eat on my bed, trying to calm my heart and slow my pulse a safe distance away from my computer and the Internet.

  After eating the last bite, I returned the bowl and spoon to the kitchen, plopped them into the sink with the dirty dishes, and went back to my desk. Conjuring up courage, I forced myself to read one of the articles. It had a whole bunch of suggestions.

  Ask your adoptive parents. My mother was deceased. I couldn’t possibly ask my dad. I think after the loss of my mom, my dad would have been too threatened if I told him I wanted to meet my birth mom. I would have been able to talk this over with my mom. She was open and would have worked through all her emotions with me. I’m sure we both would have cried, but she would have given her blessing for me to find out where I came from.