by Ian Withrow
She pulled her warm, woolen Shahmina tighter around her shoulders, grateful once more to Selimah, the woman she'd met in Pakistan just a few short weeks ago.
They'd been visiting Azad Kashmir, just to the west of the capitol, Islamabad. Tensions had been mounting between several of the larger religious groups in the region. With riots and violence rising, Dustin had suggested that visiting the Middle East might be way to help stop the bloodshed. Her crew loved the idea, and in no time she found herself on a plane headed around the world.
“Show the world your gifts are for everyone, that they come without bias. Maybe they’ll stop trying to tear each other apart.”
He didn’t have to add that most of these groups were fighting over her.
It was Lauren's first trip abroad. It should have been a magical, enlightening experience for her. Like it would have been for any other 18-year-old. Instead she was met with the same throngs of frenzied people as she'd contended with in the States. She knew nothing of the language, or of the culture, but she saw plenty of people in need when she arrived.
Selimah though. She stuck out.
Lauren thought back to Selimah's face, to the stark reminder of what people could do to one another. She couldn't have been more than twenty, tall and bronze-skinned with ebony hair. Her most striking feature, however, were the horrible burns across her face. Badly scarred, she was missing most of her lips, and was blind in one eye. She was so caught off guard by the woman, Lauren almost didn't notice the child Selimah was holding. Her oldest son, Fatihm. He was six. The boy had a badly maimed leg, the product of a roadside bomb a few years before.
Lauren wasted no time healing the boy, giving him a reassuring smile and a pat on the head, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the woman. Selimah had dropped to her knees, planting her face against the dirty, trash-covered street in gratitude for Lauren's gift.
“She is praying, giving thanks to Allah for his mercy and for your kindness,” her translator told her.
“How did she become injured?”
The translator conveyed Lauren's question. Selimah's face was difficult to read, but she seemed ashamed when she answered.
“She says it is a punishment for her dishonoring her husband. Another man grew attracted to her because she did not keep her beauty hidden.”
Lauren felt certain that Selimah would have lived the rest of her life with that horrible scarring. That it would have never crossed her mind to ask for Lauren's gift herself.
Lauren couldn't understand.
“Why? Why would someone do that to another person?” she had asked Dustin.
“Well... it's complicated. Culture takes many forms, Lauren. Art. Music,” he paused. “Even Justice.”
“This is justice?”
She was appalled.
“Lauren... it's a different way of life.”
He'd explained that women's rights weren't the same everywhere. That women in that part of the world might find themselves subject to having their features disfigured with acid for a variety of reasons.
Lauren grew more horrified the more he explained. She dropped to her knees and wrapped the woman in her arms. Selimah raised her head to look at her, and Lauren was awed by her restored beauty. She had bottomless, forest-green eyes that reminded her of Erin's, and a face that belonged in a museum amongst great works of art.
But she didn't look grateful, she looked terrified.
Selimah had held out her the shawl then, insisted that she take it.
“T-tell her I don't accept payment,” she nudged her translator.
“She says you must take it, ma'am.”
Lauren had finally been forced to accept it for fear of insulting the woman.
Immediately she had taken her son and disappeared back into the crowd.
“Why was she so upset? She'll be ok, right?” she'd asked.
Dustin's silence that day still weighed heavy on her mind.
A shiver brought Lauren back to the present. The thick wool on her shoulders could only warm her body, not her heart. She sipped her too-hot tea, tasting the heavy dose of medovina she'd poured into it before it burned her tongue.
The hotel attendant hardly spoke any English, but she'd eventually managed to convey to him both her desire for liquor and for discretion. She enjoyed the sweet liquid, relishing its warmth spreading through her as her thoughts returned to the past few weeks.
The whirlwind tour that had brought her here was a blur. Ethiopia, Somalia, Moldova, Afghanistan, and now, Bosnia.
She'd barely slept.
Each city was the same. Each country. Each continent. Always the crying, screaming faces pressing in around her and the outstretched hands reaching and grabbing at her.
She shivered again, but not from the cold this time.
“You should still be asleep,” Dustin's voice startled her, causing her to splash some of the scalding liquid from her cup onto her hand. It burned for a moment, and she stared dispassionately as an angry red welt raised itself and then immediately faded from sight again.
Some things never change, she thought ruefully.
Her eyes settled on a hair-thin scar that the fading burn brought back to light.
Others do.
“Lauren, you need to rest.”
Dustin's paternal concern irked Lauren.
“Even when I sleep I don't rest, Dustin, you know that. Don't pretend you can't hear the screaming.”
Silence.
Her bitter words weren't meant to cut so deeply, but it was true. The nightmares hadn't gotten better. If anything they were worse. The details changed, but the dream itself mostly stayed the same. Some nights it was Gabriel she was chasing, others it was Erin. But it was always to the house in the woods, always the wolves pursuing her.
She'd discovered that alcohol would help to deaden the impact, even help her sleep if she could get enough of it. But it was next to impossible to find her fix under the watchful gaze of her escorts.
Especially Dustin.
He'd nearly caught her twice, and she didn't want to consider what might happen if he did.
“Where are we going today?” She tried to change the subject, to lighten the mood somehow.
“There's a cathedral here, Katedrala Srca Isusova. It means Sacred Heart,” his response was businesslike, brusque.
She hated when he did that.
“Why?”
“You're having dinner with a representative from the Vatican, they're the ones that paid for most of this leg of the trip.”
Lauren thought of her self-imposed penance.
“I don't want to visit priests and politicians. I'm supposed to be helping people.”
He took a long slow breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“And you're doing that from a balcony? By stewing in your own bitterness? You're doing that by denying yourself basic needs like real meals and rest?”
Turned out his words were sharper than hers.
“Shut up, Dustin,” her tone could have melted steel, and the look she shot him over her mug could have brought down a building.
She moved to storm past him, upset at his insight, but his hand shot out and grabbed her arm.
“What's in the cup,” It wasn't a question so much as a statement.
“T-t-tea,” she stammered in startled surprise.
“Lauren,” his scolding tone inflamed her anger.
“Let me go,” she snapped, yanking her arms from his grasp. “If I say its tea, it's fucking tea.”
His hand lashed out, quick as a viper, and he grabbed the mug. He held it briefly to his nose and then, scowling, poured it out onto the balcony floor.
“Lauren you are a teenager, and in an unstable emotional state. The last thing you need is a depressant in your system.”
Lauren was floored, beyond offended.
“I'm unstable? I'm fucking unstable now?”
Her wings twitched and flicked, and her fist clenched tightly, cues to her impend
ing explosion.
“Honestly?”
Exhaustion and stress found an outlet through anger and she swung wildly at him. Her fist impacted futilely on the steely muscles of his arm. He hadn't even bothered to flinch.
“Lauren,” he started again, his tone still maddeningly even.
“How dare you. How dare you judge me,” her tone was caustic.
“I hate you.”
The spirit of her anger danced when it seemed, just for a moment, that his eyes truly registered pain at those three little words. Deep inside she knew she was burning a bridge that might never be repaired, but she didn't care.
To her dismay he simply nodded, replying in his usual businesslike manner.
“Ok.”
Lauren was beyond words. Speechless with anger she stormed away from the balcony, retreating across the suite to her bedroom and slamming the door shut as hard as she could. Expensive paintings rattled on the pristine, midnight blue walls of her bedroom. She locked the door behind her, knowing it would irritate Dustin.
Bastard, what the hell did he know.
Lauren threw herself onto the large feather-bed that was the centerpiece of the room. She stared dejectedly out of her large, four-paned window as the sun crept higher into the sky.
It was too bright, too cheery to suit her current mood so she walked over and dragged closed the thick, floor-length curtains, plunging the room into darkness.
Returning to the bed she chewed over Dustin's words. Her relentless, never-ending exhaustion eventually overcame her anger, and she slipped fitfully to sleep.
Lauren was jogging barefoot through the Shawnee.
A powerful storm was building and already fat raindrops had started to pelt the ground, stinging her skin. She knew this trail, though she couldn't remember exactly where it let out of the forest. Her pace was brisk, and she felt an ominous foreboding as she ran ahead of the storm.
The citrus smell of crushed pine needles beneath her feet combined with midnight rain, roses, and... something else. Some sickly sweet scent she couldn't place.
“Lauren,” a familiar voice called from just ahead. Just around a soft, slow bend in the trail. She knew the voice, but couldn't put a name or face to it.
Lightning ripped across the sky, accompanied by peals of thunder that shook the ground as she emerged out into a cornfield.
She paused, her neck hairs raised and a sudden and ominous sense of deja vu filled her with dread.
A long and lonesome howl rose from the woods behind her, joined quickly by many others.
A large white house sat in the middle of the cornfield ahead, could she make it in time? For some reason even the prospect of safety in the home ahead of her filled her with fear.
Faced with the fury of the storm and the threat of the wolves, Lauren had no choice. She tore across the field, the beasts still howling behind her. She could hear their tireless, panting breaths by the time she reached the yard. She crossed the yard and porch in seconds, propelled by the gusting winds. Even so, she barely made it before the first of the wolves cleared the steps. She managed to slam the door in its face, but she could hear it clawing at the wood.
She moved to lean against the door, to hold the tide back, but wings suddenly blocked her way. These wings were different, they weren't white but covered in menacing, jet-black feathers instead.
Desperate, she looked around. She was in a large, dimly lit living room with four doors, one for each wall.
Lauren ran to the closest and went to open it, but she noticed a trickle of blood from underneath. Mortified, she checked another. It was the same. All four of the doors were pooling blood into the room, staining the dark wood of the floorboards.
The front door creaked and buckled, the beasts outside growled and snarled through ever-growing cracks.
At last, Lauren yanked open a door at random.
It was a staircase.
Unquestioning, terrified, she ran up the stairs. She climbed and climbed, not pausing even when she heard the sounds of breaking wood and knew they had gotten in. The sounds of pursuit grew closer and closer, she could feel the hot, fetid breath of the animals on her neck.
Higher and higher she ran, the hallway narrowing as she went until she was barely able to squeeze through with her wings.
A sharp, piercing pain in her left wing told her she was caught.
She was dragged forcefully backwards until the mouthful of feathers was ripped out. Wasting no time, she sprang back to her feet and continued her running. The wolves were distracted for a moment and she gained a little ground.
Lauren finally burst out of the tightening tunnel and onto the top of a windswept bell-tower.
Looking around for an escape Lauren saw none, only the tumultuous, lightning-scarred skies.
She ran to the edge of the tower and stepped up on the low ledge. Looking down, she realized she was at least fifty feet in the air.
The clicking of paws alerted her that the predators were here, spreading out behind her and preparing to pounce.
She leapt.
For a brief moment she believed she was free, but as she flapped her wings she felt the iron-strong jaw of one of the wolves clamp down on her leg. Razor-sharp teeth dug into her calf and the animal began to drag her back to the platform.
She started to scream, knowing no one could hear her, as the wolf pulled her down and the rest of the pack descended upon her.
Lauren woke still screaming.
Dustin was pounding on the bedroom door, calling out to her.
Lauren curled up and hugging her knees to her chest as she wept. She sobbed, begging the empty room for it to go away, for the nightmares to stop. She wished desperately for an escape, for a return to normalcy, for a normal to return to.
“Lauren, open the goddamn door!”
She registered his voice, but her mind was a tangled mess of fear. She couldn't yet bring herself to move.
Dustin threw his weight against the door. The wood buckled and cracked, just as the wolves did every time she closed her eyes.
Lauren covered her ears with her hands. She couldn't listen to the breaking wood. It felt too much like the dream was bleeding over into reality. Seeping through the cracks like blood under a door.
Lauren screamed for him to stop, but her words were garbled.
Dustin was relentless, he was making quick work of the door and Lauren couldn't take it any longer.
She ran to the window, tearing curtains open she was blinded for a moment by the full afternoon sunlight. Not waiting for her eyes to clear she pushed open the window and climbed unsteadily to the sill.
Shapes were beginning to form against the blinding brightness when Lauren leapt. The sound of her powerful wingbeats competed with crunching wood as Dustin finally kicked in what was left of the door.
But he was too late.
Lauren climbed rapidly, shooting up into the sky like a firework with sun glinting off her snowy wings.
The cold wind roaring past her face nipped at her nose, but it also helped wash away her terror. Here, in the sky, she felt truly untouchable. Her pulse slowed and her breathing stuttered back to normal as she rose.
Her eyes finally adjusted fully to the sunlight and Lauren looked around. She was freezing cold, and much higher than she'd ever flown before. The cars below her were tiny swarming ants running along narrowly defined tracks through a maze of tiny boxes and blurs.
Lauren realized she had no idea what their hotel looked like from up here, or even a really clear concept of where it was in the city. Dustin should be furious with her, but she knew he would instead show more of his endless patience.
Which would in turn make her feel worse.
The wind at this height was arctic, and cut through her clothing like a knife. Besides, she was going to have to drop lower if she wanted any chance of finding the hotel.
She swooped low, paying little attention to the gathering crowds of people who marked her passage. By now she was used to seeing
swarms gather around her as she traveled. From up here in the air they weren't so bad. Still intimidating certainly, but also humbling. Even a little flattering.
But from within, when the sky seemed miles away and the press of flesh crowded her from every side, it was a living nightmare.
Soaring a few dozen feet over the rooftops she attracted considerable attention. Camera flashes and shouts followed her and before long people were gathered in waiting at every turn, anticipating her arrival.
Dammit, all the freaking buildings look the same.
She kicked herself for her rash decision making.
A loud pop, like a firecracker, caught her attention from below. Lauren instinctively pulled into a tight, fast turn to circle back.
A man was laying on the ground, he had on a thick, bulky winter jacket and worn, faded blue jeans. A growing pool of red stained the street below him and the crowd there was yelling and forming a circle around him.
Alarmed, she dropped quickly from the sky, landing a few feet from the man. The down draft from her widespread wings blew across the crowd, eliciting awed gasps.
He was a young man, early twenties perhaps. He had a pale complexion and was wearing mostly threadbare clothing. His jacket was the exception, it was a puffy, nearly new winter coat. There was a large hole in it by his shoulder, nearly an inch wide, where the white polyester stuffing was spilling out. As Lauren watched, it was slowly turning red, soaking up blood from some unseen wound beneath. Lauren began to unzip the bulky garment, trying to better see the wound so she could reach it and heal the man.
As soon as her fingers grasped his zipper, however, the man reached up and grabbed her arms. He gripped her forcefully, pulling her close to him. She pushed past the discomfort, used to desperation from the people she helped. She could see his chest rising and falling with more surety as he healed swiftly.
But he didn't let go.
Instead, he growled something at her in a language she couldn't understand. The words were harsh, guttural, menacing.
Lauren pushed at him, trying to pull herself away, but he was too strong. As she shoved at his chest she felt something hard and block-like under his thick jacket. Something hidden beneath it. She fought harder, her wild eyes searching the crowd looking for help.