by Dan Pearce
I swiped my access card to unlock the entry doors and made my way to the elevator once inside. My clothes were semi-clean, but I was filthy. My nose had long before stopped caring, but I knew I smelled atrociously based on the looks I got in both airports and the physical distance people had been giving me. Several days’ worth of sweaty exertion mixed with the smell of old blood couldn’t make for a good mix. My entire arm, from my shoulder to my fingertip was shaking uncontrollably as I dug out my keys and worked to unlock the padlock to our home. The apartment was empty. I was actually quite relieved that Samantha wasn’t home. I could get cleaned-up before she got there.
I left my suitcase in the entryway and went straight to the bathroom, undressing myself as I walked. I tossed my clothes into the hamper and pulled open the shower door. A bright pink note had been taped to the faucet handle. “Do not use – pipe burst – plumber scheduled,” it read. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I grumbled after reading it. Deep breath. You made it home.
I ran the water in the tub until it was hot and set the plug to let it begin filling. A hot bath would be so nice right then. I squeezed liquid Epsom salts into the water and bubbles immediately began building. I knew I shouldn’t sit in that tub. I knew I couldn’t sit in that tub. But I had no choice. I would have to sit in that damned tub. Deep breath. I can do this.
“No chances,” I said aloud as I walked naked through our apartment, back to the backpack I had dropped beside the suitcase. “No chances,” I mumbled again, as I pulled the last two remaining energy shots from the small compartment of the backpack. I made my way back to the bathroom and removed the protective seal from one and gulped it down. “No chances,” I said again as I stepped into the hot water and let my muscles cry out in joyous delight as they let go of all the tension that had gotten us to that moment. I set the unopened energy shot next to me, and immediately snatched it up again. “No chances,” I said one more time, as I downed that one as well. I would rather be a trembling mental mess when Samantha got home than to fall asleep and miss seeing her completely.
That awful full-body queasiness soon set in, but it didn’t last long. Though my heart’s rhythm was again perturbed and disrupted, I felt alert and better about relaxing a little more in that bath.
I used a fresh washcloth to clean the buildup from my face, and Samantha’s loofa to scrub the grossness from my body. She’d love that, I sarcastically thought. I repeatedly dunked my head in and out of the water to rinse away multiple shampooings, as I washed the grit from my hair and scalp. Finally satisfied that all evidence of Peru was gone from me, I sat back in the water, feeling fairly awake now, and thought about Tashibag.
I thought about the words she made appear in the dust and what she meant when she referred to a coming war. I wondered why she wouldn’t have shown herself to us. I thought about Dishon and wondered if he had received my message. I thought about Samantha and wondered if she would be home soon. Samantha. My sweet, awesome, sassy Samantha. There has to be an answer, I thought as I swirled my finger through the thinning layer of bubbles surrounding me. I racked my thoughts. There has to be an answer. There has to be an answer. There has to be an answer. There has to be…
CHAPTER 29
“Put some clothes on before children walk this way,” the wheezy voice of an old man said to me in Nepali, as he repeatedly nudged my sternum with what felt like the blunt tip of a stick.
I didn’t want to wake up. Sleep felt too wonderful. No. I wasn’t going to wake up. Not yet.
He nudged me again. “School is starting soon. Come on. Get up and get dressed. The kids are coming this way.”
Nepali. I hadn’t heard that language in so long. It was a beautiful language. Why was this man so…
“No!” I screamed, as I suddenly became conscious enough to realize that I was no longer sitting in our bathtub at home. “Why?” I cried as I leapt to my feet. “Why, why, why?”
I looked over the top of the hunched old man’s head and took in my surroundings. Unpaved streets stretched in various directions. They all were lined with derelict, yet colorful three and four-story apartment buildings. An ugly tangle of power lines ran back and forth from building to building above the roads, which were beginning to fill with street vendors setting up their carts in preparation for their day. The outline of the Himalayas could be seen in the distance through the thick layer of smog that covered whatever city I was now in. “That’s impossible. How did I… How could I…”
The old man was holding a cane, the tip of which he poked into my exposed ball sack. “Come on, man. Where are your clothes?” he said.
I pushed his cane away and continued to ignore him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said as I ran my fingers through my still wet hair, realizing that I had really fucked up. Somehow all the caffeine wasn’t enough, and I had fallen asleep in that goddamned bath tub.
“You stay here,” the man said, and he disappeared around the corner.
Others had noticed me and stopped what they were doing to stare. I turned to the wall so that only my naked ass was exposed and bumped my forehead against it repeatedly as the inevitable tears worked their way into my ducts. The old man returned a minute or so later, carrying a thick folded blanket woven from red wool. “Wrap yourself in this,” he said as he shoved it between me and the wall. “Hurry. The kids will soon be walking this way.”
I took the blanket from him and wrapped it around me. “No,” was all I could repeatedly say in disbelief, as my tears really began to flow.
My Samantha was gone.
It was all over. I would never see her again.
I would never again feel her soft fingers slip into my robe from behind.
I would never again be able to see for myself any of her 27 different smiles that I knew so well.
I would never again make love to her.
I would never get to console her as she cried.
I would never get to listen to her tell me all the drama that was happening at work.
I would never get to make-up after a petty bicker with her.
I would never get to feel her. Hold her. Enjoy her. Breathe her in. Hear her laugh. Watch her dance while she cooked.
I would never again get to groan as she pulled me into clothing shops, nor would I get to tease her for her love of reality television.
I would never get to smell the way her favorite perfume mixed with her natural aroma to create that scent I never could inhale enough of.
I would never again get to sit with her and wait for the city train. I would never again pile into the back of another city taxi with her. I would never book another airline ticket for the two of us.
It was over.
I would not see her again.
She would arrive home and excitement would almost certainly flood her when she saw the suitcase I left in our entryway.
She would call out my name and get no answer.
She would come looking for me in the bedroom and see light streaming from the crack beneath the bathroom door.
She would swing open the bathroom door and say something cute like, “baby, baby!” or “there’s my man!”
She would see my dead smart phone on the countertop.
She would see a tub filled with water, a layer of grime resting along the bottom.
She would see the opened and emptied energy shot on the edge of the tub.
She would see the dirty washcloth wadded up next to her dirty loofa.
She would see indisputable evidence that I should be there, but she wouldn’t see the one thing she was desperate to see. She wouldn’t see me. And the coming weeks and months which followed would torment her in ways she didn’t know were possible.
The old man stood leaning on his cane next to me, watching me cry until those tears turned to anger.
My Samantha. How could I do this to us both?
I repeatedly hit the stucco with the side of the closed fist on my hand that wasn’t keeping the blanket in place.
Fuck. Fuc
k, fuck, fuck.
I dropped my fists, but only clenched it harder.
How could I let this happen? How had it gotten to this point?
Without thinking, I punched the wall, and hard. Hot pain shot through my knuckles and into to my elbow. “You stupid fucking witch,” I screamed.
I just want to love. Why the hell can’t I just be allowed to love? Why am I not worthy of love?
New tears began to form, and I punched the wall again to stave them off.
I wanted to kill Tashibag. I wanted to find her, I wanted to somehow make her suffer the way she had always made me suffer, and I wanted her to be dead.
I finally wiped my dripping nose against my arm and took a deep breath, then pushed myself away from the wall. My knuckles were bleeding. I didn’t care.
“Are you finished?” the old man said.
I didn’t acknowledge his question.
“I know who you are,” he said a few moments later, once I had regained some of my composure.
“No, you don’t,” I said, turning to walk in a direction that would take me away from his nosy insistence.
“Yes, I know,” he insisted.
“I promise you don’t know me, old man,” I said. “Leave me be.”
“Ahhh. For how old you are, it seems you are not really so wise,” he replied.
I stopped and turned back toward him, setting my thoughts of Samantha and Tashibag aside for the moment. “What did you just say?”
“I know you,” he said once more.
“Who am I, then?” I asked.
He grinned a toothless grin. “You are Cain. You are he who cannot die.”
I really didn’t like whatever was happening in that moment. “How could you possibly know that?” I demanded of this man I in no way recognized.
“The better question you might ask yourself,” he said as he turned and walked the opposite way, “is do you want to get this woman of yours back, or not? Because I can make that happen.”
EPILOGUE
Tashibag stopped for a moment to appreciate the early morning steam floating dreamily above the slowly rolling Stabburselva in the distance. The entire valley would soon be covered in mist as the winter’s first inch of snow gave most of itself back to the clouds that dropped it there during the night.
The forest of shrubby pines was thinning this far South and had begun mingling with the native birch. The top leaves of the lichen and heather speckled the surface of the icy white forest floor, serving as a reminder of the barren soil that covered this isolated part of Norway. Her trees would grow here, though.
Tashibag inhaled deeply. Yes. They were close now. Very close. “Prepare your voice,” she said to the small white-haired man standing beside her. “Our friend will be here soon.”
The layers of thermals and other thick clothing beneath Burdo’s winter parka gave a chubby appearance to the man whose face had all but disappeared behind the fat wet scarf he kept wrapped around his neck and ears. He pulled the wool away from his mouth and began a series of humming grunts as he searched for the pitch he wanted.
Tashibag looked back at the sea of moving scales and the thousands of tiny red eyes which followed them through the snow. “Sissula va tisha senshamni a rachissl,” she whispered, which translated to “this is where our fruit shall grow.” A rumbling collective hiss rolled through the quiet air as an acre or more of the forest floor began writhing and throbbing in excited anticipation from her serpents. “Ishno ropluxshi mun bensila,” she whispered, which translated to “you are all so beautiful.” Again, the sea of snakes responded affably.
The white serpent that Tashibag carried circled around her neck and tightly constricted as if to hug her. “Asho du shishasho ido,” she whispered to it, which translated to “Thank you, sweet companion.”
She whispered something more, and the snake immediately lowered itself headfirst through the opening of the witch’s gaping robe. It disappeared between the exposed flesh of her warm breasts, and reemerged at her lower thigh, where the shiny ruby fabric ended. The snake spiraled its way down the smooth skin of her exposed leg and across both the witch’s naked feet, as if it was attempting to absorb as much of Tashibag as it could before it left her to join the other serpents. It reached the sea of snakes, half of which were brilliant white, the other half glistening black, and disappeared into its massive writhe.
“Nudina,” she whispered.
A different serpent that had been patiently waiting for its name to be called emerged from the midst of the others, climbed the length of Tashibag’s body, and took its place atop her shoulders. “Ini blushori du shishasho ido,” which translated to “I have missed you, sweet companion.” She turned around and stood quietly, watching through the openings of the trees in the distance while Burdo finished dialing-in his voice.
In the crook of each arm, Tashibag cradled a large and bumpy seed, each the size of a honeydew. “There he is,” she said, when she noticed movement through the trunks of the trees ahead. “Tell him it is us and to have no fear.”
Burdo let out a series of short roars, and the large polar bear in the distance roared back in response. The two spoke back and forth until the bear was satisfied, and it majestically moseyed through the snow to where Tashibag and Burdo stood. He plopped his butt down and sat tall and proud on the ground before them.
“Ask him the name he’d like me to call him,” Tashibag said. Burdo asked the bear, who quickly answered back.
“He would like you to call him King,” Burdo told her.
“Hello King,” she said.
The bear nodded once.
“Tell him he is beautiful,” she said. Burdo told the bear who nodded again as if to say thank you. “Tell him he is powerful,” she said. Burdo told the bear, and again the bear nodded. “Tell him I respect him,” she said. Burdo did. The bear nodded. “Tell him I would appreciate very much if he would let me ride his back for a season.” Burdo translated her message for the bear, who responded with several short but varied roars.
“He wants to know why you want him,” the man with white hair told the witch.
Tashibag bowed her head to the bear. “Tell him that together we will fight the darkness of the world together. Tell him that I once rode upon the back of his ancestors.” Burdo told the bear. Again, the bear nodded, and this time kept his head bowed to the woman.
“May I?” she said to the bear, reaching her hand and placing it against the wet yellowed fur of his chest. She stepped away, and the polar bear lowered its belly to the ground. Tashibag handed her seeds to Burdo and took hold of the hair on the back of the bear’s neck. She pulled herself up onto his back and shifted her weight until she found a comfortable riding position. “I promise you we will do good in this world together, King,” she said as she reached forward and scratched behind the bear’s ear. “We will do so much good.”
The bear pushed its giant paws into the ground and stood, lifting Tashibag high into the air with him.
“I think King should decide where our trees should grow,” she said as Burdo handed the seeds back to her. “Ask him if he’d prefer this hillside or the hillside across the river.”
Burdo spoke to the bear. King responded, and the group began their walk down the hill and toward the river.
CONTINUED IN BOOK TWO…