by Koby E Hill
The woman had departed from the bathroom after the two had made love for what felt like hours. Once she had first woken up in the tub, she recalled light pouring in from the window above her. Now, she thought she could see the twinkle of a streetlight peering through the night’s dark caping in the bedroom that the woman had offered her. She slept once again—one of the most satisfying sleeps she’d ever encountered.
Chapter 8
When Alice rose from sleep, she could still see the streetlight’s flicker. She hadn’t made a note of the time before she fell onto the bed. She looked at clock then, and saw that it was still early morning. Beside her, a pillow looked ruffled, and sheets seemed have been used. She touched them as she sat up, and closed both of her eyes.
She was still unable to completely sense her abilities, and felt a distinct drowsiness that she normally only felt after over-exerting herself. The latter was a possibility, but she was generally able to recover after a night of solid sleep. She touched the outside of her left eye, and still felt hesitant about opening it entirely. Instead, she massaged it, touching the top to the bottom as gently as possible. As she did this, an electric shock waved through her face, beginning at her eye and passing through her jaw. It wasn’t painful, but was a novel sensation.
Alice heard the sound of mugs clinking lightly outside of the room. She was able to sense this, but to a much more moderate degree. It was a lot like feeling hung over from a big binge the night before—minus the alcohol this time.
Alice moved the sheets and climbed out of the bed. She was only wearing the robe that the woman had placed over her, while the rest of her was hanging loose and free. She found her clothing in a neat pile on a chair in the corner of the room. She picked it up, and, once more, caught the scent of something floral in her nostrils. She assessed the clothing for blood and debris from the van, but there was nothing that indicated that the explosion had occurred at all. The woman had washed her clothing while she was knocked out that night.
Alice dressed herself and walked out of the room. Morning light was beginning to tease on the horizon outside the window that stretched over the living room. The rectangle shaped revealed a balance, and the silhouette of the woman standing as still as a mannequin, balancing her coffee mug between two fingers. She, too, was wearing an amber shaded robe, and its color comforted something in Alice. The light of the morning sun softly touched it, along with her flawless skin. Alice walked through the living room and onto the balcony, which expanded into a verdana. They were located on the second floor of a large house, looking out onto an expansive body of water. There were houses lining up adjacent to it, looking like candles that had been put out for the evening.
An old-style lantern sat on a small side table in between two lounge chairs. When Alice opened the door to the balance, the woman turned slightly, half of her profile becoming washed over in plastic radiance. “I thought you’d never wake.” She pointed at another mug that was steaming from a fresh pour on the chair beside her. “There’s sugar and cream in the kitchen, should you need it.”
Alice picked up the mug with two fingers, and as she blew the steam, she muttered sarcastically, “Now let’s not play games, shall we?”
The woman smiled. She raised her mug in the air to meet Alice’s. They clinked softly in the morning air. “I’m Angela.”
“It’s nice to meet you again, Angela.” Alice plopped herself down on one of the lounge chairs. She felt herself sinking into it, with an ease that frightened her. “We should get some things out of the way first before you poison me with your sensuality again.”
Angela laughed. Her hair was clipped into a small bun and pushed to the side, revealing a neck that was fragrant and inviting. Alice thought for a moment about how this must be what it feels like to be charmed by a vampire.
“But it’s such a lovely morning. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wait on all of our responsibilities? That’s often how I think of this place—a purgatory to rest with all of our most difficult decisions.”
Alice sipped her coffee. It was perfect. She wasn’t surprised. “Unfortunately, that’s not how I work. How do you do the blocking? Is it the same material they built around Crowden?”
Angela sighed, placing her mug on the deck in front of her. She spoke as if she were reciting to the quiet, sleeping city. “I can do it without any material. It’s actually been surprisingly easy with you, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately…” Alice whispered to herself. “It’s definitely unfortunate for me too.”
“Is it, though? If it was harder, we wouldn’t be here. We would have died instead of acquainting ourselves so well yesterday.”
Alice sighed. “As spectacular as that was, I still need to know a few things.”
Angela turned, holding her coffee cup between her hands. She leaned against the deck, tilted her head back and breathed in deeply. Birds were waking up and chirping their early birdsong. Everything around them smelled like pines, maple, and that intense lavender that seemed pervasive. She spoke selectively to the earth around her. “It started when I was around nine—ten years old, perhaps. My parents were young when they had me, so, naturally, there was resentment in their hearts. They fought tirelessly, mostly pointlessly, for as long as I can recall. My father was having multiple affairs, and it upset my mother immensely. At the time, I had no idea what it actually meant to be in love. I thought she was just being stupid.” Angela gulped on her wine. Her blinks were becoming slow and intentional. “I found that I was able to open and close doors and windows if I just thought about them enough. One night, though, my father had returned from work and was preparing to go back out again. We didn’t have to be psychics to know that he was planning on finding another woman to sleep with. It made me angry, so I decided to try thinking about him getting very, very sick.” Alice watched Angela intently as she spoke. She didn’t stutter, she did not hesitate or fiddle with her mug or fingers. She was speaking factually about the past, and there wasn’t anything that disturbed her about Angela’s behavior. “About five minutes later, he started complaining about a stomachache, some nausea and pain. Albeit, he did not go that night because he spent the majority of it in the bathroom on the toilet.” Angela laughed her tiny exhale of air that appeared to be all the joy she would allot to herself. “My mother still tended to him, though. So for every night for two weeks, he spent his time sitting on the toilet. It was only the third or fourth day that I found out there was blood in his stool. Then, eventually, it was only blood he was excreting.”
While Angela spoke, Alice was trying to subtly push inside her mind without her noticing. She knew that Angela was aware that this was going on, because she felt a pushback against any attempt at puncturing the securely blocked wall that was her mind.
Angela put the mug down, and crouched in front of Alice. The movement was unexpected, and Alice felt her own stomach flinch in response. Angela gripped the hand of Alice’s that was wrapped around her mug. She started again, unrelenting. “I want you to know Alice, that nearly a month after I had made my father sick, he died from blood loss. An autopsy revealed that he had stomach cancer, and they’d never seen such a rapid prognosis in their careers. I have no doubt in my mind, that I am the one who is responsible for killing my father.”
Alice was beginning to feel that sticky sensation of fear again, but this time, she decided to push it away. She leaned forward in the chair and wrapped her opposing hand around Angela’s. “Why are you telling me this? And why, of all people, was it me that you wanted to tell?”
“I wanted to tell you that I don’t regret it. My mother now lives on her own ten blocks from here in a mansion I stole from a dying man’s clasp. She tends to wildflowers and owns six rabbits. She’s never been happier.”
“I still don’t comprehend why me. You know, this would work a lot easier if you let me have my mind reading abilities just for about five minutes.”
Angela smiled, and squeezed Alice’s hand. “No one has been in
there, ever. And I know how driven you are by obligation to your cause. I can’t have you meddling around in there.”
Angela stood up. “But I am not an unreasonable woman. Come with me, and listen, and I’ll let some of the walls down momentarily.”
She pulled Alice to her feet and guided her back into the living room. There was a large mirror hanging over an elaborately decorated fireplace, and this was where the two stopped. Angela motioned to the mirror with her chin. “I got this mirror a couple years ago from Italy. The person who sold it to me said that it apparently belonged to Piertro Guerrieri.”
Angela paused, glancing at Alice. Alice shrugged honestly.
“He was the member of an Italian rock band, who supposedly had committed murders as a satanic ritual with one of his band members.”
“You knew they were lying, of course.”
Angela touched the corner of the mirror. The lie was practically screaming in her mind. She’d apparently learned that morning that one of Guerrieri’s siblings had lived next door to her, so the narrative was fresh in her mind. She was pretty proud of the re-telling, actually.
Angela slowly placed all five of her fingers at the corner of the mirror’s frame, and pushed. Alice heard a beep, an unlocking sound. Soon after, the thin surface of the mirror swung outward, narrowly missing Alice’s face. Inside the mirror were separate frames around them, dark ones, with various items of clothing pressed between them. At first glance, Alice thought they were flowers, but after a closer inspection, she noticed a glove, a necklace, a sock, frames of glasses, a piece of fabric that may have been taken from a tie or scarf, a ring, and a lipstick-stained napkin. Alice ran her eyes over all of the items, forgetting that her scanning abilities had been greatly dulled by Angela’s block. It was like being an incredibly talented track runner for most of your life, and then waking up, suddenly unable to use your legs to even walk across the room. She didn’t feel like herself, and the awareness of this was beyond unsettling.
Alice squinted hard. She had yet to open her left eye that morning. She was starting to feel headache rising in her skull too, and it had been years since she felt it. “What am I looking at here, Angela?”
“Trophies—I think are what profilers would call them. Trophies from all the lives that my influences have affected. It reminds me, along with this mirror, how keenly we, as humans, are able to tell ourselves a certain narrative, and to stick with it, even in dire circumstances.”
She pointed at the frame that held the glasses, and tapped her fingers against it. “These were my father’s.”
Alice was rubbing her forehead, feeling slightly irritated. “You said you were going to let the walls down a little. I can’t think very well with this cloud over me.”
Angela moved her fingers from the frame, cupping them in front of her chest. “Yes, I will allow that for a little bit now. Please do not try to get in, or I’ll know.”
“Pinky swear.” Alice smiled. Angela did not smile in response, and instead, sighed heavily. Alice instantly felt a relief pass over her, the detection of the room’s surroundings slowly coming back to her. She wasn’t in full-fledged control, but the relief was palpable. Her own thoughts were clearer, and her scanning of the room felt closer to her real sensitivities. Angela, though, still remained as stone, in her mind’s eye.
“Thank you.” Alice breathed hard. “Thank you so much.” She moved her eyes back to the collection of frames. She could feel the people of whom the items belonged to better than the blank canvas she had felt mere minutes ago. Most of their associations felt warm to her—all but her father’s glasses.
“So you justify what you do because it’s the narrative you tell yourself? And you compare it to a human’s narrative?”
“I don’t justify anything that I do. I just do it.”
“Are you looking for me to accept that?”
Angela laughed, and placed a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “Oh, of course not, Alice. I know what drives you, remember?”
“Then why find me? Why let me live? Why fuck me?”
Angela reached out her opposing hand and placed it on Alice’s cheek. “We’re very similar, you and I. The main difference is that you are vastly limited by a moral code. I have not been, not since I made my father bleed for a month before he died.” She ran her fingers down over Alice’s lips, and began caressing them. “I’ve been watching you for some time now, and you couldn’t see me at all, thankfully. I’ve developed an affection for you. I’ve never encountered someone with such similar woes and challenges.”
Alice lifted Angela’s fingers off of her lips. “Except I didn’t make my dad shit himself to death.”
“An accurate statement. But you wanted to do something, didn’t you?”
Alice slowly lowered Angela’s arms and placed them at her side. She turned away from Angela and looked out onto the dark water. Angela crossed her arms, and observed.
“You never told anyone, I know. Not even Claire, about what happened with your father. How his presence was so relevant to what happened to you—the powers, and the thoughts that followed.”
“I know the difference between thoughts and actions, Angela. You’re not going to convince me that deep down, I’m really like you.”
“You don’t strike me as a person that could be convinced of anything.” Angela sauntered, and stood beside Alice. “What I’m asking you, is to help me. Instead of fighting against me, trying to capture me and study me at Crowden, work with me, and we can achieve wonders.”
Alice closed her eyes. The memory of her father had been banished from The Gallery, but he still managed to creep into her dreams every now and then. Dreams and associations are two aspects of the human brain no one has been able to master infiltrating. If Alice was given the opportunity, she would erase him from her mind permanently.
“You have to tell me everything first, and then I can make a decision, only then. And maybe let me into that mind of yours for a little bit.” She turned to meet Angela’s furrowed brow. “It’s only fair. You’ve been inside mine, so I have to be able to go inside yours.” She turned her body towards her, and stepped forward. She touched Angela’s open neck, stroking it with her thumb. “How are we ever going to learn to trust one another otherwise?”
Angela lifted her hands, and placed them on Alice’s neck. She brought both her thumbs to the center of her throat, and pressed lightly against her vocal cords. “I could break them in half right now, with barely a flick.”
Alice couldn’t hold in a quiver of laughter. “Trust me baby, you’d be doing me a favor.”
Angela lingered for a few more moments on Alice’s throat, caressing it, squeezing lightly, before she removed them entirely. “Alright, then. A little give and take.”
“You’re not an unreasonable woman, after all.”
Chapter 9
Emmett came out of the van at the same time that Alice was being dragged through the road. When he awoke, the world was shaking, and more than anything, his rage was blinding his vision. Craig was shaking him, trying to drag him out from the engine that he knew was mere seconds from igniting. Emmett’s face felt like a broken mask; instinctively, he tried to move them but beneath his aging skin, his shattered bones quivered. Craig had managed to remove him in time before the entire vehicle caught fire. Flames caught onto his ankle as Craig frantically moved Emmett across the road, and gripped him in an icy burn. Craig shielded his body as debris flew upward into the sky, then pelted his leg in a distressing speed.
The sky was a deep, chrome grey. Emmett observed it as he tried to slow down his heart rate and bring himself back into the present. His ankle was throbbing, but after summoning the energy to sit up and observe the damage, he counted himself lucky. Tobias was consoling Ella, who appeared to still be unconscious. The van he’d been driving looked like the remains of an archaeological dig. Craig was standing near it, wearing only a t-shirt and dress pants. He was looking out onto the road, where a shocking scene was unfolding that
Emmett couldn’t see.
“What’s going on, Craig?! What are you looking at? Where’s Alice?”
He realized he was actually worried about her, and peered around the field in a hasty rash movement.
Craig spoke outward into the air. He was yelling, and gravely frightened. “She’s on the road. Someone is coming towards her. I think it’s her.”