Second Thoughts and Last Chances
By
Latikia
Edited by
The Old Fart
Copyright © 2007,
2008
Chapter 39
Against a foe I can myself defend,
But heaven protect me from a blundering friend!
I left my old friend and mentor sitting in his rocking chair with a dazed look on his face, a blistering ring of freshly implanted emotions tucked away in his neural net and a brand new lease on life. The dazed look would pass, in time; which was more than could be said for the other two.
I drove myself back to the airport, climbed into the Agency helicopter and returned home.
There was plenty of time to think, and lots to think about, on the way back; which I assiduously avoided. My mind was still far too focused and clear right then, and the last thing either I or the pilot needed was a blizzard inside the helicopter.
I tried to get angry, just a little bit, to counter the
frigid chill that remained within the confines of my mind. I mean honestly, it’s not like there weren’t
plenty of nasty feelings floating around
I wasn’t really in the mood for anger anyway. There was a mountain of sadness occupying my heart right then; along with hillocks of disappointment, regret, disenchantment, disillusionment, sorrow…
They say that to have a friend, you have to be a friend. They also say that to love another you must first love yourself.
They say a lot of things; most of which are, in point of fact, pure bullshit.
However, they
might actually be on to something, friend thing-wise. I wouldn’t know.
No; I take that back. I knew quite a lot, intellectually; not nearly so much in practical terms. After all, most everyone’s got acquaintances and associates that they call their friends; but are they? Are they really? I suppose it all depends on how you define friend. I asked David Jones about that once. He said a friend was someone he trusted behind his back with a loaded weapon.
I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for that definition.
I’m not sure I’ve one of my own that’s as well reasoned. I thought I did—once. But of course, as with so many of the things we think we know and/or understand, life and experience have the most vivid inclination to demonstrate just how comprehensively clueless we truly are.
Friends are supposed to be people whose company you enjoy, and who enjoy your company in return. People you can confide in and relate to; who you’re fond of. People you trust.
I’d begun to recognize in myself a pattern that had developed in the way I dealt with other people; by which I mean I’d become far too dismissive of those I didn’t trust and far too eager to go along with those I did.
There’d been damn few of that second brand of individual in my life, and, as always seemed to be the case in these matters, I’d just up and tossed another one out the window.
Wasn’t there anyone left in the world I could trust who wasn’t carrying one of my rings?
Recent history kind of hinted that the answer was a resounding No!
Was I lonely?
I’d be lying if I claimed I hadn’t been a lonely child. But that was then—and, as with most things, given sufficient time, we can become accustomed and inured to almost any set of conditions or circumstances. Doesn’t mean we like or enjoy them, but we do adapt.
In all honesty, I did get lonely, from time to time; mostly when separated from the girls and children for an extended length of time. Say, more than five hours.
I can’t remember a single moment though, after my three girls had met for the first time, when I felt the need for either companionship or closeness with anyone other than them, and eventually our children.
Years of study and research into the human psyche have led me to agree with the generally accepted conclusion that people are communal creatures who require multiple levels of personal contact and interaction. In other words, people are herd animals who need company to be happy and well adjusted. The vaunted support system of pop-psych mythology. It probably won’t come as much of a surprise to learn that I vehemently despise the phrase. Knowing that about myself, it was one hell of a shock discovering how desperately I needed one of my own. The shock was even worse once I learned just how fragile my support system truly was.
Losing Dr. Wills as a friend though hadn’t even phased me, and when, during the course of the flight back to the ranch, I came to that realization, it saddened me greatly. For about twenty seconds.
Losing one of my few remaining friends should have bothered me more, but it didn’t. Come to think of it, cutting Evan DeBerg loose from my life hadn’t bothered me a whole lot either.
Peggy was right…I was drifting away; isolating and insulating myself more and more.
Was it intentional, or incidental?
I thought about that for a minute or two, decided that I wasn’t particularly interested in the answer—so I just stopped thinking about it.
I leaned my head against the high impact plexi-window in the door and watched the landscape below rush by.
Rush, rush—rush! I took another deep breath, and inhaled thousands of additional feelings along with the air. Another breath followed; shallower than the one before, but carrying even more emotional content.
I was weary. Not in a
physical sense—mentally and emotionally weary.
Physically I felt just about the same as I had since returning from
My mental and emotional condition…well, that was an altogether different story.
Never an admirer of people to begin with, I’d been losing what little respect I did have for them at one hell of a rapid pace.
Trust, as always, was a major issue.
I knew people. I mean—I really knew people. The only way I could have known them better, more completely, was if I’d been a mind reader.
Thank God that wasn’t the case!
Bad as it was to have their feelings paddling about in the kiddy pool of my veins, free-falling thru ravines of my lungs and roosting in tree house of my brain, I shuddered to think how bad things might have been had I’d been saddled with Charlie’s ability.
No wonder the poor girl had gone mad. No wonder she’d started thinking she was a god.
There is a point where an abundance of information or understanding ceases to be useful, ceases to be power, and merely becomes a burden; a mind diddling, soul numbing, hernia building mountain perched between your shoulder blades like an enormous lead gargoyle, threatening to grind everything that’s good and decent in you to dust.
And like it or not, almost no one is up to carrying that kind of weight. Charlie hadn’t been. Tim neither, for that matter. Their fantasies, and the pair had suffered from a surfeit of similarly misguided delusions of grandeur, had fucked ‘em up but good. Both fervently believed that their abilities made them bigger, badder, more significant and invulnerable than they really were.
Was I any different?
“Just barely.” I muttered softly, my words drowned and diluted by the synchronized thrashing of the rotor blades above my head.
Squeak—squeak—squeak—squeak…
“…wrong with this damn thing?”
“Must’ve bent one ‘a the wheels when we dropped the iceman.”
“…weighs a fuckin’ ton!”
“Was I blamin’ you? No I wasn’t…”
“…even alive?”
“Beats me. Sure ain’t a healthy color.”
…squeak—squeak—squeak—squeak…
“Can the chatter and keep moving!”
“…colder than a witch’s tit.”
“…think this guy’s dead Paolo?”
“Not yet he isn’t. Now keep moving!”
…squeak—squeak—squeak—squeak…
I wanted a little time alone, so I had the pilot set down in
a clearing a couple of miles from the ranch’s eastern property line. I got out, sent him back to
Trees to the right, trees to the left; occasional open areas broken by animal paths or small streams, dips or inclines in the landscape. Hard to tell for certain what direction I was walking in, compounded by the grey overcast sky that blocked the sun from view. Didn’t matter to me. I knew where I was going. I could feel them ahead of me, their specific emotional flavors acting like a beacon.
Should I tell them?
Would knowing that we were all related make any real difference?
It might.
It didn’t to me.
But it might to them.
Yeah, it might. But if I didn’t tell them, they’d never know. Wills sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them.
So don’t tell them.
I only had his word for it anyway.
You know he’s right.
I suspected he was, but…
You know damn well he’s right!
Okay, so I knew it. He’d supplied enough information to fill the gaps. I could, in my mind, see the complex and extensive family tree that had the four of us at its root. I could see the branches flaring out and away, spreading back into a dim and dusty past that I could almost taste.
But that vision only extended back a hundred years or so. There was more…a lot more…I was fairly confident, but I couldn’t be certain. I needed more information. And the way things stood, there was only one source left to me I could trust.
Who’d a thunk it?
The one and only person left in all the world I trusted, and who didn’t carry one of my rings.
My father.
Time to pick up the pace. Time to get home.
I could feel them in front of me. All of them; the girls, the kids, Harmon, Sly and their men…Peggy’s horses. I felt each and every one, knew where they were in relation to the others; could almost tell what they were doing.
Harmon, Sly and their men were patrolling. The horses weren’t doing much of anything. The kids were playing…I couldn’t tell what, but AJ was losing and wasn’t happy about it. Their mothers were together in another room talking.
Everything was calm and satisfyingly normal. Except…
I sensed some unfamiliar bundles of emotion as well. Some were small animals. Deer, squirrels, birds, a cat…and two unknown, unfamiliar people working their way cautiously towards the house on a parallel track to the one I was on.
I started running.
They had a head start on me—not much of one, but enough to be worrying.
I couldn’t tell what was on their minds. I never can. They were feeling cautious, but not overly so. They were also intent and determined.
Their presence on our property could have been explained in a myriad of ways. Maybe they were lost. Maybe they’d been on a hike and simply wandered unawares onto our land. Maybe it was pure coincidence that they were on a direct path to the house.
Maybe.
It would have taken a small army to secure the boundary; we simply had too much acreage. Harmon and his men were there to secure and defend the main access road and the house itself, and they’d done a good job in the months they’d been with us. We didn’t get many sales types or Jehovah’s Witnesses looking for converts.
Having a large amount of land kept the neighbors at a distance and visitors to a minimum, but it also meant that we were vulnerable to the occasional trespasser. There’s no security system, short of mine fields, known to man capable of adequately covering that much area.
But I could. It was one of the reasons I’d always favored the ranch. I’ve always liked the idea of being able to see my enemies coming; of being able to pick them off before they got too close. It just wasn’t very often that I’d had the opportunity to indulge that preference.
The house we’d later moved to in
I loped along, dodging trees, jumping bushes and hedges, keeping a constant lock on the two intruders’ position. Twelve minutes passed before I felt that I was far enough ahead of them; far enough ahead to scout out a spot for the interview. A little over a mile away from the house.
Harmon and his men were splitting up. Four headed of towards the main gate, four in the direction of the horse paddock and the rest fanned out to patrol the tree line. Inside the house, the girls had left the room where they’d been and joined the children.
I sat down on a dead-fall tree, one that provided a clear view forward, a heavy thicket behind, and waited.
The pair advanced steadily towards me.
I reached into my jacket pocket, retrieved my little secure cell phone and quickly punched in a number. A clear tenor answered.
“Mr. Harmon, we have a couple of trespassers on the north east side of the property, roughly one mile from the main house.”
“…no, keep those men you’ve already sent to the main gate where they are. Pull the remainder in close to the house and keep watch on the tree line.”
“…there’s no need to cause them any undue worry. I’ll get back to you once I’m done here. This shouldn’t take long.” I disconnected and returned the phone to its pocket.
I sat and waited patiently; eyes straight ahead, senses open and probing. The pair emerged from the trees talking to one another in subdued tones and stopped dead in their tracks the moment they became aware of my presence.
“Hi.” I said pleasantly.
“Hey.” the smaller of the pair replied after a prolonged hesitation. She was rather plain looking, about average in height and build, and wore rather non-descript clothing. Her partner was more distinct; taller, swarthy, very good looking and more stylishly dressed, but with distinctly feral facial features.
“Mind telling me what you’re doing on my property?” I asked.
“Yours?” the shorter woman parroted blankly.
I shrugged expansively. “It’s not really mine. I kinda serve as grounds keeper and head of security, so…”
The second woman eyed me warily, inching one hand very slowly inside her unzipped coat.
“We were just walking and taking pictures.” the smaller woman replied after a moment’s consideration, lifting the 35mm camera that hung from her neck on a thick leather strap. “Sorry, we didn’t know this was private property.”
“Sure you did. Question is, who sent you?” I asked.
“No one sent us.” she said quickly.
I shook my head slightly. “That’s lie number one. Two more and I stop being friendly.” I smiled broadly. “And if your friend doesn’t quit reaching for whatever she’s got hidden away under that coat besides her tits, I’m liable to get downright nasty.”
I stood up slowly. Their eyes grew wide with fear, which was completely understandable as I’d linked with both, and was feeding them enormous doses of that very same emotion.
“Now, let’s try it again…who sent you?”
“…just me or is it getting hot in here?”
“You’re going thru menopause, now shut the hell up and keep moving.”
“No, really…shit, I’m sweating like a pig!”
“You’ll be squealing like one if I have to tell you
again. Push the goddamn gurney and shut
the fuck up! I’m sick to death of hearing your voice.”
…squeak—squeak—squeak—squeak…
The two women turned out to be a couple of university students who’d been hired thru a series of cut-outs to do reconnaissance. All they knew was that they’d been given five hundred dollars up front to scout the property and take photos of the house, with a promise of an additional five hundred upon delivery of the film.
Poor girls. They’d begged me to let them finish their job, pleading that they really needed the money for tuition, suggesting in not very subtle ways that sex with one or both would be my reward for turning a blind eye.
Poor stupid girls.
I kept the camera and all the film they’d brought with them. In return I gave each of them a ring filled with love, paranoia and apprehensive terror and sent them running back in the direction of their car. The emotions locked within those two rings would eventually drive them insane. They’d be of no use, informationaly speaking, to anyone.
I was never able to prove it, but I was convinced that Alex Chorney was behind, far behind, their little scouting trip. And it bugged the hell out of me that I wasn’t able to pin it on him.
I didn’t let that slight detail stop me from returning home, going into my den, turning on my computer, activating the special program Laurie/Lucy had installed, and killing half of Alex’s cousins.
The girls took the news that we were all related far better than I’d anticipated. Far better. In fact, they were thrilled. Lilly in particular seemed to take a rather perverse delight in our new familial connection, and spent the remainder of that evening slipping in close when the children weren’t looking and groping me. Her wickedly sensual grin kept me from complaining too loudly.
I got even later that night as we lay in bed, dropping my mirror and allowing the three of them to experience the full extent of my expanded power up close and personal. Lilly and Izzy handled it well enough, eventually.
Peggy was a whole other story. She insisted on linking with me the moment the mirror stopped reflecting, and while Lilly and Izzy shivered and moaned uncontrollably from the secondary emotional overload, my little half-pint screamed like a banshee, clawed at my chest with her fingernails until she drew blood and then she collapsed on my bloody chest and wept like a baby for close to an hour. Then she passed out and remained unconscious for the rest of the night. I made no effort to break her link, leaving it intact. She’d just have to learn the hard way.
After a few hours of lying sandwiched between two life sized vibrators, Izzy and Lilly finally acclimated to the emotional runoff and came to their senses. I carried Peggy into the bathroom and cleaned the blood off the both of us while the other girls changed the bed sheets. Returning to bed I spent the remainder of the night being dry humped, groped, fondled and caressed from either side by two semi-sleeping women while Peggy lay unmoving on top of my torn chest like a dead weight.
Not the best night of my life, but things could have been worse. The important thing was that they’d survived. They’d survived and I hadn’t burst into flames, turned into a block of ice, or blown up the house.
“…together now, lift!”
…thwump…
“…guy weighs a fucking ton!”
“Cold as a witches’ tit and stiff as a
board too.”
“Get the gurney out of here, you assholes. Put it out in the hall and don’t let anyone take it. We’re gonna need it afterwards.”
“What are they plannin’ to do with the iceman Paolo?”
“Whaddayou care?”
“I don’t. Just curious.”
“Take your fuckin’ curiosity out into the hall and stay there till I call you.”
“…grouchy cocksucker…”
I went to the White House the next day and politely refused the President’s semi-magnanimous offer. He was, shall we say, less than pleased which made me inordinately happy.
However, out of a sense of patriotism and enlightened self-interest, I offered the services of my new (but yet to be established) think-tank to the government, at a generous discount.
I left the White House feeling better about myself than I
had in some time. Then I went to my
personal lawyer (the AG) and we set the creation of my, actually Laurie and
Nigel’s, think-tank into motion. When
asked what we’d decided to call it, I spaced out mentally for nearly thirty
five seconds before telling the AG to call it the
Time passed quickly, as it seems determined to do the older you get, and before I knew it, we had a new President.
He didn’t like me one little bit, and the fact that the previous office holder had attempted to foist me off on his administration as a watch-dog didn’t help our relationship. But there was damn little he could do about me as long as I confined my activities to the CIA.
Little did he know…
The girls found a private school not too far from the ranch (relatively speaking) to send the children to, and I agreed after spending a day there screening the faculty and staff. Tink and Rosie liked their new school and the new friends they made, while AJ was simply content with being allowed to attend with his sisters; Belle, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less. School for her was nothing more than something to do when she wasn’t studying with her Sifu.
Peggy reestablished her veterinary practice; working from an office we built on the same property where our security people had their homes.
Lilly and Izzy had more free time on their hands, with the
children away at school, so they became involved with the Foundation at
Laurie’s request, interviewing and recruiting talent from across the country
and soliciting funds to keep it running.
Without meaning to, they became
And I kept myself occupied creating admirers within the new
administration, including for the first time, the upper echelons of the FBI.
“…we ready?”
“Almost there sir.”
“What’s the hold up?”
“We’re having trouble keeping the electrodes on him. His skin is cold and wet. The adhesive won’t stick.”
“Then nail them on! But get it done quickly.”
“Yes sir.”
…Belle’s first tournament was nerve wracking. Sifu Nigel had been against her competing, for two reasons: first, he’d been teaching her, at my request, to fight not score points and second, because the majority of children in Belle’s age group were considerably smaller. He spent the two weeks prior to that first tournament drilling her on the rules, reminding her that winning at that level was less important that insuring no one got hurt.
Izzy was convinced that her baby was going to get hurt.
The entire family and Laurie were there in the stands to cheer our girl on. Nigel knelt next to Belle, whispering final instructions into her ear. Belle had, early on, been wide eyed and excited. She’d even done a fair imitation of Tink and Peggy’s little toe bouncing routine, grinning from ear to ear. And then, when it was her turn to take the mat, she shut it off like a light switch. I sat in the stands and marveled when I felt her damp down every last one of her emotions. I could barely tell she was there at all. Her expression dulled and in seconds went from excitement to stone faced determination.
Belle finished third in her age group, accepted her trophy with studied calm but cried in the van all the way home. She felt as though she’d failed.
It took two long days to get her back to her normally exuberant self, at which point she returned to training with a ferocity that would have impressed any of my old Army instructors…
…the children’s school hosted a student art festival in late May. One of the other student’s parents, a noted Art critic from the Smithsonian, discovered Rosie. Lilly had allowed her to display the pencil drawing she’d done of her mother and I, which I’d had framed and hung prominently in the living room. The critic had a hard time, at first, accepting that a little girl had created that particular drawing, until Rosie sat down with her sketch pad and, in a matter of a few minutes, produced one of the woman that was nearly as good. Lilly told us that when Rosie showed the critic some of her more risqué drawings, she nearly had a stroke.
The woman offered to act as Rosie’s agent if she ever decided to sell any of her work.
Lilly made her daughter promise not to sell any of the nudes until she was at least eighteen. Rosie smiled tolerantly and agreed…
…AJ grew bored with playing the keyboard we got him, even though he’d gotten pretty good at it, and announced one morning at breakfast that he wanted to take up the saxophone. When Lilly asked him why that particular instrument, he replied that it was sexier. His mother choked on her coffee while Izzy and Peggy hid their smiles behind their hands and AJ’s sisters giggled brightly.
I just sat at the table, sipped my orange juice and frowned…
…Laurie/Lucy, came all the way out
to
It was a toss-up. I couldn’t make up my mind whether I should be pissed or proud. In the end I decided to share the wealth, and told Peggy. She got pissed and grounded Tink for twenty years to life while I got to revel vicariously in my baby’s achievement…
“…got it! Okay, we’re ready.”
“About time.”
“Settings?”
“Five thousand volts for five seconds.”
“Five-kay for five…CLEAR!”
…zzzztttzztttzzttttt…
…September 11th.
Even though I’d had access to all the classified message traffic that came in or left the CIA since 1991, I can honestly say I never saw 9-11 coming. The only excuse I can offer is that I tended to focus exclusively on classified information and where it went. I never made reading the un-classified traffic a part of my daily routine. If I had, it’s possible I might have put the pieces together in time.
It wasn’t my job, and I know it wasn’t my fault; I even realize that it’s not actually possible for one man to read all the messages and memos generated by an organization that size on a daily basis, but even so…
“…no significant change in either heart rate or blood pressure.”
“Ten thousand volts for ten seconds.”
“CLEAR!”
…zzzztttzztttzzttttt…
…another war. There’s always another war. Just wait long enough and one is bound to come along.
The Army wasn’t going to call me back; that much I knew. Not with the kind of notation I had on my DD 214.
Even so, I suggested to the big brass at the Pentagon that
it might be a good idea for me to go to
They turned me down flat.
Then the girls discovered what I’d done (I think Laurie told them, although she’s always flatly denied any involvement) and all hell broke loose. The shouting, screaming and crying went on for several hours. Once their tirade ended I found myself banished from my bedroom for nearly a week.
I had to swear on my children’s lives that I’d never do anything like that ever again before they’d allow me back.
I fumed silently over that episode for a long, long time. Couldn’t catch Bin Laden, couldn’t catch Alex Chorney. What good was I?
That’s when I truly began obsessing…
“…don’t think this freak’s got a central nervous system.”
“Twenty thousand…and why don’t we shift our focus to the good Doctor’s more sensitive areas.”
“CLEAR…”
…months and years passed…
…AJ gave up on the saxophone—he said he wanted an instrument he could sing along with while he played—so we bought him a guitar…
…Belle never again failed to win first place in any competition she entered and by the age of ten she had gotten so much bigger and stronger than other children her age she was forced to compete in weight groups, fighting kids who were sometimes three or four years older than she was. Sifu Nigel suggested it was time for Belle to begin learning weapon forms. Belle was ecstatic and Izzy worried more than ever…
…Rosie made several thousand dollars selling her drawings to
various collectors around the country, and Lilly insisted she put the money
into a savings account, calling it her
…Tink began doing something called blogging on-line. Laurie and Peggy agreed it was a much better
outlet for her intellectual curiosity than hacking. I asked Laurie, out of Peggy’s hearing, how
far my little girl had gone with her hacking.
“She broke my security at NSA.” the little woman replied with an approving
grin…
“…fifty thousand! And don’t stop until the bastard screams or
catches fire.”
The Delphi Foundation had taken about a year and a
half to get up and running, but once it was, the
demand for our services was extraordinary.
At first it was the smaller, lesser known government agencies that came
to us with requests for proposals, evaluations and plans. It was decided at the inception that we’d
handle any area our clients were interested in.
Economics, Ecology, Statistical and Sociological research, Military and
Security matters in general, Politics and Diplomacy…if somebody was interested,
the Foundation would take the job…as long as I approved the requesters. The board of directors had insisted on that
last item, and I found it hard to fault their reasoning. We were the new kids on the block and could
hardly afford to get caught up in any of the usual
We’d have never made it thru the first year without Lilly and Izzy’s help. They found us the people we needed, oftentimes from the strangest places one might think to look and usually with the oddest backgrounds and credentials, but they were, for the most part, young, bright and tremendously motivated. You didn’t often see that in your run-of-the-mill D.C. think-tank. Too much of the Ivy League Ring Knocker’s Protective Society at work in their recruiting…in my opinion.
During the Foundation’s second year, we began to receive requests from Congress. And all the crap I’d refused to deal with by not taking the former President’s lifetime appointment, began to show up on the monthly agenda of the Delphi Foundation.
Laurie moved the majority of her ex-White Dragon people out
of the NSA and into the depths of the Foundation. She had plans to expand the operation,
possibly to
Whatever…
I couldn’t have cared less. By then only one thing mattered to me.
My focus was squarely on finding Alex Chorney. The sonofabitch was still beyond my reach and
my obsession with finding and killing the man had grown to fanatical
proportions. It was damn near all I
could think of, and the toll it was taking on my personal life became more and
more apparent…
“…damnit Laurie, I’m fuckin’ fed
up to here with excuses! I don’t care if he’s gone to ground in Bumfuck
The woman cowered behind her desk, as her NSA office windows began to frost over. I turned on my heel, flung open the door and stalked out, her soft sobs faded away as I bulled my way down the hall, watching people scramble to get out of my path…
“…the fuck is up with you? I swear to god, living with you is getting to be harder than pulling teeth from a pit-bull. You snap at us for no damn reason, Nigel says that Laurie damn-near wets herself at the mention of your name…”
…walking down the hallway towards my den I spotted Rosie and Belle coming out of the library. They stopped suddenly and stared wide eyed at me, each of their hands reached for the others. Then, as one, they darted away towards the family room without so much as a word…
…sat in the library with a thin paperback held in the fingers of one hand; the light volume lying unnoticed atop my left thigh as I stared blindly ahead. Izzy entered quietly, lifted the arm holding the paperback and sat down on my lap.
“Watcha doin’?” she asked.
I blinked a couple of times and looked down at the book and hand that now rested on her lap. “Thinking…reading…not thinking and reading.”
“Why don’t you come sit with us? We’re all watching a movie in the family room.”
I shook my head slightly. “I’m not very good company right now Izzy.”
She barked a gentle laugh. “You haven’t been very good company for months.” She ran the fingers of one hand over the left side of my face. “Where has the man I love gone?”
I looked into her eyes, seeing, and feeling, sorrow, compassion, fear and love.
“You mean where did your little brother go?” I asked just a little snidely.
Izzy smiled sadly. “Silly man, after all these years you still don’t understand? The only man I’ve ever loved was my little brother. Why does it still bug you that I won’t think of you as just another guy?”
I sighed. “I dunno. It just does.”
My sister leaned in and pressed her lips against mine for a brief moment. She pulled back and continued to caress the side of my face.
“You were never going to be another guy. Not to me, and not after…” She paused and smiled fondly, remembering. “…not once you made me see you for who and what you really are. You made me love you.”
I jerked back, as though struck. “I never did that. I never would…” I objected, but she placed her fingers over my lips and chin, stifling the words before they left my mouth.
“You made me love you; the scared, lonely boy hiding inside my little brother’s body. So afraid of being hurt, but still brave enough to forgive me for hurting you. Brave enough to give me what I wanted and needed, even though you didn’t know what it was, or how to do it. Brave enough to come back and save me from my own stupidity, even though I’d done all I could to push you away. Brave enough to keep doing it, year after year.”
I stared my sister in the eyes and acknowledged her words with a nod.
“Brave enough to give me everything I ever asked of you, without once asking what was in it for you.”
We both knew what she was referring to. “I could have said no.”
Izzy smiled and stroked my lips with her fingers. “No you couldn’t. You love me too much. You love us too much, even if you didn’t realize it at the time. I saw it, saw the way you lit up when the three of us first met.”
“I’d have…” and her fingers pressed hard against my lips again.
“I know.” she said, radiating understanding. “I know. That’s why we decided not to give you a choice; you’re probably the most loyal and inherently monogamous man on the face of the planet. I couldn’t risk giving you a choice.”
Izzy took a deep breath and resumed running the pads of her fingers over and around my lips.
“It took a while, but I’ve come to terms with the way I feel about you. I love the boy you were, and the man you’ve become…and if it turns out that you’re on your way to becoming something more than a man, it won’t change the way I feel one little bit. But it also won’t change the fact that you’re my little brother, and that you’ll always be my little brother. And it won’t change the fact that my little brother is the one I love, the one I lust after, the one who knows how to make my happy, the one who makes me cum the hardest, longest and best. The finest lover and husband I could ever hope for and the best father possible for our daughter.”
She leaned her forehead against my cheek. “I love you so much. It kills me to see you hurting like this.”
I wrapped my free arm around her waist and pulled her closer.
“Let it go. Please?” she begged me.
“I can’t.” I whispered.
“Why not? He can’t hurt us anymore. You’ve seen to that.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out why for a long time now.” I raised the hand that held the book. “Recognize this?”
Izzy moved her face along mine to get a better look at the book in my fingers.
“The Iliad?”
I nodded. “Do you know the first lines?”
“Not by heart, no.”
“…mênin aeide
thea Pêlêïadeô Akhilêos
oulomenên, hê muri' Akhaiois alge' ethêke,
pollas d' iphthimous psukhas Aïdi proïapsen
hêrôôn, autous de helôria teukhe kunessin
oiônoisi te pasi,
Dios d' eteleieto boulê,
ex hou dê ta
prôta diastêtên erisante
Atreïdês te anax andrôn kai dios Akhilleus...”
“When did you learn Greek?” she asked.
“I haven’t. Just
repeating what one of the professors at
The wrath, goddess, sing of the wrath of Peleus' son, Achilles,
that destructive wrath which brought countless woes upon the Achaeans,
and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes,
and made them themselves spoil for dogs and every bird;
thus the plan of Zeus came to fulfillment,
from the time when first they parted in strife
Atreus' son, king of men, and brilliant Achilles.”
Izzy frowned. “And which one are you?”
I brushed off the question and continued with my train of thought.
“The first word is the key to the entire story. Mênin. Wrath. The wrath of Achilles. Remember the story? Remember why Achilles is so angry?”
Izzy nodded. “Sure…Atreus’ son, Agamemnon, demanded that since the gods decreed he must return the daughter of one of Apollo’s priests to her family, Achilles would have to give the king the best of his prizes; a captive girl named Briseis.”
I nodded my head. “That’s the how. But why was Achilles so incredibly pissed off?”
“I give up…why?”
“Timê and kleos. The first is generally translated as honor but its essential meaning would be the tangible, physical expression of honor in the form of booty, gifts or extra special prizes. The second, kleos, means glory or fame, but at its heart it boils down to what other people say about you. The two terms were very closely inter-related; an individual’s kleos depended, to a large extent, on the timê offered by his peers, but kleos also served as the only true form of immortality available to Homeric heroes. They would live on in popular memory based solely on what people said about them after they’d died.”
“So Agamemnon was restoring his lost timê at Achilles expense?”
“Yep. But what Agamemnon did was especially damaging to Achilles on more than one level. First, the gods themselves decreed that Agamemnon had to return the priest’s daughter. His attempt to replace what the gods had taken away was, in a manner of speaking, utterly blasphemous. And given that the reason he had to return the girl in the first place was that taking her was in itself an act of blasphemy, Agamemnon was only compounding his first mistake. Second, you can’t add to your kleos by taking unjustly from another; all you can do is disgrace and dishonor them. Third, kleos, immortal fame, is what Achilles lived and fought for. Nothing was more important to him. Not family, not friends, not comrades-in-arms, not the mission—not even his own life. By depriving Achilles unjustly of his honor, Agamemnon forced the one man seen as the living-breathing embodiment of their society’s heroic virtues to question his world view. Eventually it drove him to completely abandon his cultural morality, and he never truly recovered. He came close, after agreeing to return Hectors mutilated body to Priam, but by then it was pretty much over; all he had left to shoot for was kleos, personal glory. Modern heroes are defined in terms of self-sacrifice for the sake of strangers, friends, comrades, or families. Achilles, in our terms, wasn’t really a hero at all. None of his great deeds or military victories was specifically intended to benefit anyone other than himself.”
Izzy stared at me for a long moment, her eyes unmoving, locked tightly on mine. Then her gaze began to wander slowly up and down, side to side, round in semi-circular sweeps…
“Don’t you think that’s kinda sad? I mean, the greatest warrior of his era and his sole motivation was the approval of other people?”
“Izzy…self esteem is a modern conceit. Very recent—very twentieth century. Ever heard the phrase, ‘my word is my bond’?”
“Of course I have, so what?”
“There was a time, not so very long ago, when all a man had, or needed, was a good name. A good reputation. Reputation was everything; social standing, credit rating, personal and family honor…all rolled into one. Call a man a cheat, or a liar and you put his reputation in danger. Kill the reputation, kill the man. Next best thing to being ostracized. Honor had to be protected at all costs. Why the hell do you think dueling was so endemic? Better to be dead than have your reputation and honor tarnished or diminished.”
“Modern society’s evolved beyond that sort of neanderthal mentality.” my sister insisted, running her fingers across my forehead.
I snorted softly. “The hell it has…all that’s changed is that swords and pistols have evolved into lawyers and instead of smacking your offender across the face with a glove, now we slap ‘em with a lawsuit. Now-a-days it doesn’t matter so much what people think or say about you; what matters most is who’s got the best, or better yet the most clever, lawyer and who ends up with the most money.”
Izzy watched my face closely. “You’re over simplifying.” she finally said.
I nodded. “Probably.”
“You don’t have to be Achilles. You weren’t the one who was dishonored; I was.”
“He used you to get at me.”
“That’s not your fault.” Izzy insisted.
I exhaled loudly. “I promised Dad that I’d take care of you—protect you. I gave my word.”
“You don’t have to kill him Ike. You don’t! You didn’t kill Ricky.”
“Ricky didn’t hurt you to get at me.” I said flatly. “If he had I’d have killed him.”
“Even though I asked you not to?”
The cold hard look in my eyes and steely expression on my
face were all the answer she needed.
My sister put her face against my neck. I could feel her hot tears as they flowed down under the collar of my shirt.
“Then find the bastard and kill him. Finish it already. We want you back. I want you back.”
I swallowed hard and held my tongue. I wasn’t at all sure I could come back.
“…did you stop? I didn’t hear any screaming.”
“His skin…can you see?”
“What about it?”
“It’s not blue anymore.
He’s white as a ghost.”
“That’s how he normally looks…now, shall we continue? I don’t have all day.”
“Fifty-kay?”
“You must have read my mind.”
…zzzztttzztttzzttttt…
…three weeks to the day after their eleventh birthday, my three daughters were ushered into my den by their mothers, who smiled enigmatically at me for a brief moment then backed out of the room and shut the door solidly behind them. I got up from the desk, where I’d been working on my department’s budget for the next year, moved to the large wing-back chair in the middle of the floor and sat down facing the girls.
They were growing like weeds.
The three of them smiled shyly at me; Rosie shuffled her feet, Tink bounced just a little on her toes and Belle stood still as a stone, but blushed just as brightly as her more active sisters.
I smiled slightly. “Are you gonna make me guess what this is all about?” I asked, looking from one pretty face to the next.
All three blushed even brighter. Then Tink, who, of the three, had the hardest time containing her feelings, burst; exclaiming just a little too loudly “We got our periods!”
Oh—fuck!
I blinked—once—very slowly. “Uhmmm…congratulations?” I temporized, rather cleverly I thought, while trying to keep the panic I was feeling out of my voice and off my face.
“Daddy!” they exclaimed in unison, sounding in turn equally pleased, amused, offended and embarrassed.
I shrugged and sat back. “Sorry…you caught me by surprise. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Rosie said reassuringly.
“Okaaayyy then…ah, why did your moms just shove you in here with me?”
The blushing began again. “They said you’d answer our questions.” Belle informed me. Her sisters bobbed their heads in agreement.
“About your periods?” I asked stupidly.
All three started laughing and the tension they’d been sharing vanished. Tink skipped forward and hopped up on my lap. “Not about that. We already know about that.”
“Then about what?”
“Sex.”
My brow furrowed and my right eyebrow lifted. “And your moms sent you to me?”
All three of them smiled faintly and nodded.
Déjà Vu all over again. The feeling I had was awfully reminiscent of that first morning when Lilly and Peggy discovered my sister and I in a bare-ass clinch.
I shook my head in disbelief. “You guys already know where babies come from…right?”
Tink frowned prettily. “That’s biology…we already know all that stuff.”
I brushed up on my stupid man in the midst of brilliant women look. It didn’t take long to get right back into the swing of things.
“Then what?”
“Sex.” Rosie enunciated clearly and slowly, with very definite emphasis.
Oh—fuck!
My neck snapped loudly when my head dropped forward and the point of my chin impacted with the top of my ribcage.
“Tricia, she’s this girl in my physics class, well she says swallowing sperm will clear up zits. Is that true?” Tink asked eagerly.
I shut my eyes tightly and resisted the impulse to clamp my hands over my ears…
“…first positive response we’ve seen so far.”
“Voltage alone isn’t going to be enough; increase the amperage.”
“CLEAR…”
…zzzztttzztttzzttttt…
…how can I get a boy to like me?” Belle asked one evening as she and I completed our tenth lap around the house.
I had to bite my tongue to keep from either laughing at the absurdity of her question or groaning at its obvious implication.
“I don’t think you’ll have to do much at all.” I replied.
Belle, who was as a rule either wildly exuberant or absolutely stoic while running, wore a sadly forlorn expression on her beautiful face. With every passing year Belle had gained increasing control over her body and emotions and it became more difficult for me to read her feelings without linking. I’d noticed the gradual change, but never given it much thought. But at that moment she was as easy to read as anyone I’d ever met.
“Honey, things are going to be a little harder for you, when it comes to boys, than it will be for your sisters. For one thing, you’re gonna be taller than most boys. You’re gonna be taller than most men. Your average guy is seriously intimidated by tall women. On top of that, you are a very pretty girl and one day soon you’re going to be an extraordinarily beautiful woman. That also tends to scare guys. And to make things even more difficult, you are an amazing athlete. That alone would frighten away most boys. You, sweetie, are a quadruple threat…tall, beautiful, athletic and smart to boot. It’s gonna take a pretty cocky and aggressive guy to make the first move.”
“I’m never gonna have a boyfriend, am I?” she asked weakly, with so much dejection in her tone that it damn near broke my heart.
“Belle, I don’t think there’s much of anything in this world you won’t be able to get once you decide you want it. I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but if there’s a boy you really, really like then you should make the first move. Tell him how you feel. Find a way to make him comfortable enough to tell you how he feels. After all, there’s no rule saying a girl has to wait for a boy to ask her out.”
“Did a girl ever ask you to be her boyfriend?” my daughter
inquired hesitantly. I could feel hope,
a very tremulous and slight hope, growing within her.
“Ask? Not exactly. I’m not like most people, so it’s probably not a good idea to use my life as a guide for your own. But to answer your question, I don’t think I’ve ever consciously gone looking for a girlfriend. My first wife, Carlie, your mom, Lilly and Peggy…they just kinda came and got me.”
“So, if I want a boy, I should just go and get him?” She seemed perplexed and confused by the idea.
“I think that if you feel that strongly, if you’re really sure about how you feel, then yes, you should just go and get him.”
I really couldn’t believe I told her that. How fucking stupid can one man get…
“…again, if you would
be so kind…”
“CLEAR…”
…closed my office door behind me, sat down heavily behind my desk and stared morosely at the blank computer screen.
I could have turned it on and actually looked at the program, but what would have been the point? I knew what I’d see…and what I wouldn’t.
Water, water
everywhere
And not a drop to drink…
I would have killed for a stiff drink right then. The real shame was that it wouldn’t have done
a thing for me.
The little cell phone in my front pocket began beeping softly.
“Yes?”
“Ike…”
“Izzy? What’s up?” I asked. She sounded out of breath and more than a little panicky.
Her call was unexpected in the extreme. The girls avoided calling me at work as much as possible; calling my little-bitty encrypted cell phone was damn near unprecedented.
“Ike, you need to come home right now!”
“Izzy…what’s wrong?”
“Peggy just killed two men.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “She what?!” I gasped, caught flatfooted and unprepared by the sudden revelation.
“Ike, shut the fuck up and get your ass home right now goddamnit!” she screamed in my ear. “They shot her!”
I leapt over the top of my desk, flung open the door and launched myself out into the main office.
“Eric, I want the helicopter ready for liftoff by the time I reach the roof!” I snarled harshly as I barreled past my assistant’s desk…
“…oh shit!”
“What?”
…whaap…whap…THUMP…
“What happened?”
“His goddamned heart’s stopped!”
“Well get it started again, or I guarantee you’ll take his place on that table…”
…was out the door before the helicopter touched down, dropped the remaining three feet, hit the ground hard and broke into a full bore sprint, tore around the house headed for the back, and just avoided slamming face first into the dark red Emergency Vehicle that had been parked just out of sight around the left side of the house by the narrowest of margins.
Lilly and the kids were gathered off to one side on the back deck, huddled together in two groups. Lilly was doing her best to calm Rosie and AJ, both of whom gave every appearance of being in shock, while Belle stood close behind Tink, her long muscular arms locked tightly around her slighter sister; neither one looked as though they were fully aware of what was going on around them.
Izzy was crouched next to Peggy, who was splayed out along one of the reclining deck chairs; one hand pressed firmly against Peggy’s blood soaked belly, the other lovingly caressed her face and hair. On the opposite side of the deck chair knelt what I assumed to be an EMT with a stethoscope shifting around Peggy’s upper chest, and a second similarly uniformed individual stood just above the chair back, speaking urgently into a small hand-held radio.
Sly and his men were spread out around the perimeter of the deck, fully armed and facing outward, desperately eager for something to take their barely restrained rage out on.
I ran onto the deck and slid to a stop behind Izzy. “Why’s she still here? Why haven’t they taken her to a goddamn fuckin’ hospital?” I snarled.
I am, at the best of times, coarse, blunt and profane. I wasn’t always that way. There was a time, back in the days before my
twelfth birthday, when I wouldn’t have even considered cursing, swearing or
resorting to crude and uncouth vulgarisms.
Puberty and a seriously bad teenage attitude had changed all that. And while joining the Army hadn’t improved my
basic speaking vocabulary much, it did impress upon me the need for selecting
most carefully when and where to let loose with random strings
of irreverent invective. The fact of the
matter is that I like cursing. I enjoy swearing. I find it quite a linguistic challenge; it’s
no easy task, maintaining grammatical consistency while at the same time
imparting just the right degree of whatever emotional flavor I happen to be
feeling at that moment to the specific words I’ve chosen to use.
However, I’d always taken great care not to swear in front
of my kids, consciously biting my tongue and choking back those words and
phrases that came leaping to mind when I was startled, shocked, surprised or
angered. Right up until that moment. For the very first time in their lives I
swore violently and loudly in front of my children.
Izzy looked up at me; her dreadfully haggard face streaked with dirt and dried tear tracks, her expression one of undeniably anticipated loss. “She wouldn’t let us move her.” my sister rasped, her voice ragged from strain and crying. “She said we had to wait for you.”
“Goddamnit.” I swore softly. I looked around quickly, checking to see if anyone else had been hurt. They were scared, terrified, dazed and confused, but otherwise unharmed.
I stepped around to the opposite side of the deck chair, unceremoniously shoved the EMT out of the way, scooped Peggy up in my arms and pulled her away from Izzy’s grasping hands.
She looked so small, fragile, and helpless; she felt incredibly weak…and so very close to death. They—none of them on that deck—had the slightest idea how badly she was torn up inside. They had no idea how close to the edge she was at that moment; or how close she was to slipping right over that edge and into the beckoning abyss.
“Hey!” the EMT I’d shoved aside exclaimed, “You can’t be moving her like that! She’s got severe internal bleeding…you’ll kill her!”
I spun around abruptly, eyes aflame and spitting, murder in my heart. The man on the deck took one look at the expression on my face and scrambled away to cower behind his partner
“Ike…” my sister called out to me, pleading, demanding, chastising.
“Daddy!” Tink wailed, struggling to break free from Belle’s embrace.
“Nobody move!” I ordered harshly. “Nobody fuckin’ move! Stay right where you are!”
I turned around and strode off the deck. Sly and one other man stood flanking the front stairs.
“Where’s Harmon?” I asked, carefully descending the stairway.
“Missing, sir. We lost contact with his squad just before the attack. They were patrolling the eastern edge of the grounds.”
I nodded. “The EMT’s don’t leave till I say they can. And confiscate their radio.”
“Understood sir.”
I carried Peggy out away from the deck, away from the people on and around the deck.
Out near the tree line, perhaps sixty yards distant, I saw two dark, shapeless forms lying twisted together, motionless on the thick green grass next to a much larger and bloodier mass. One of Peggy’s horses.
“I did it…” Peggy gasped, struggling valiantly thru her pain to speak, spraying a fine bloody mist across my shirt front as she did. I could actually feel the life draining out of her with each word. “…I killed them.”
I looked down into her anguished little face, seeing a strange mix of pride and remorse.
“They…tried…to take Belle. Must’ve thought…Izzy. Junior attacked them…” she coughed wetly and when she inhaled it sounded like sucking the dregs from the bottom of a glass with a straw, “…they shot him…shot my baby…my fault, all my…got so angry…so angry…I stopped ‘em.”
I smiled feebly and held her tight. “You sure did. But you forgot to duck.”
“…like you, huh?”
Tears began falling in torrents from my eyes. “Yeah, just like me.”
She tried to lift her arms up, to put them around my neck, but was far too weak. Peggy was dying, and I knew it.
Did I ever. This was not new territory for me; not a new experience, nor in the least bit unfamiliar. In fact it was far too familiar.
There was no way in hell I was going to go thru that again!
I’d cured drug addiction in a morning, fixed four cases of pneumonia along with a bizarre form of antibody rejection in a couple of hours and removed innumerable cancerous tumors from within a man’s body in a matter of seconds. I’d somehow kept myself and my girls youthful and in perfect physical health for the entire time we’d been together. I could heal burns and frostbite in my sleep.
There was no goddamn fucking way I was going to loose
another wife…I hadn’t been able to do anything then, hadn’t known I could.
But that was then…
“…love you so much.” Peggy whispered faintly.
“How much, Peggy? How much do you love me? Show me!” I demanded.
She tried to smile, but couldn’t. One arm slid lifelessly over her belly and dangled bonelessly from her shoulder.
“I have to go now.” she said distinctly, though her feelings had become mushy and incoherent.
“No you don’t! Show me Peggy!” I insisted between clenched teeth. “How much?!”
With the last bit of strength she possessed, Peggy linked to me and I felt a monstrous wall of love come hurtling my way. More than I would ever have imagined existed within such a small body. She might have been small in stature, but her little body contained a monster heart.
My heart. I was, at least partially, responsible for making her who she was. I’m also a jealous, cruel and heartless bastard who wants what he wants, and I’d be damned to the deepest darkest most desolate and remote corner of the Stygian realms if I’d ever again let someone take what’s mine. Anyone at all.
Do you hear me, you
skull faced fuck?!
I twisted my own link around hers, merging the two into a single unbreakable conduit, just barely completing the weld before her wall of emotion began to transit the bridge between us.
The wall of love was more than welcome; I greeted it with open arms, devouring it in a single swallow, mixing it in with the millions upon millions of other feelings and emotions that inhabited my soul and memory, blending the mass together into what felt like a brilliantly beautiful river of blood and bone. Swirling and storming, ranting and raving, shrieking and screaming, urgently demanding to be…raging for release…for life. And into the center of that horribly magnificent river I thrust the tiny undying little flame that was me; and for the first time in my life, I let it completely loose, allowing it total and absolute freedom.
The river of blood and bone began to burn.
As did Peggy and I. The pair of us burst into flames that spread some fifteen feet in diameter around us, shooting more than forty feet straight up.
I withdrew into the flames, into myself, stepped boldly into the flaming river, submerged completely and redirected its undulating movements, its intemperate desire, and forced it back across the bridge Peggy and I had created. It took a half a million lifetimes and billions of remembered emotions to shepherd that entire river across the bridge and put it where it needed to be.
Life is pain; constant, unrelenting pain. This I believe and this I know. I’d done the best I could to shield my girls from the negative aspects of my abilities, but there was no possible way to protect them from what I was doing to Peggy. No way to protect any of us.
Peggy was in terrible pain; the wound in her belly burned like an ocean of acid and I experienced it with her, passing our suffering along to Lilly and Izzy thru the links we shared. But it was nothing compared to the agony I inflicted on the four of us by creating and unleashing that river of molten emotions.
Peggy screamed, thrashed, struggled and fought. Thru the shrieking, bellowing flames that surrounded us I heard Lilly and Izzy screaming, as well as the aural dissonance of my own tortured and defiant thundering.
I lead the river, joined the current to my will and pulled it along behind me across the bridge into Peggy’s depths. I forced the molten waves thru her body; vaporizing the jagged malformed bullet lodged against her spine, cauterizing her shredded organs, arteries and veins, sealing the gaping wound it had made in her tender flesh.
Her wails increased in pitch and volume, shattering my ear drums.
Healing her body was child’s play, relatively speaking. I remembered clearly how it had been before being damaged. Remembered exactly how perfect she’d been just that morning. It took no real effort on my part to restore her to that pristine condition. The river was my paintbrush, memory my inspiration, Peggy’s body my canvas. I was merely an artist caught up in the reactive throes of creation.
But the trauma, the shock, the loss of blood, the weakening
of Peggy’s will to live…that was all together different. How do you keep a person alive once they’ve
decided it’s time to die?
I couldn’t.
Peggy died in my arms and I damn near lost my fucking mind right there and then.
I’ve done quite a few absolutely amazing things in my life; once upon a time I took on a small army all by myself and won, got hit by a car and lived to laugh about it, burnt a boy to death using just my bare hands, gave the President of the United States a woodie via the TV, blew up a building with a city’s worth of emotions, and a man with just one. I pulled my sister, and all four of my children, from the brink of death…but I couldn’t stop Peggy from dying.
I felt her heart stop.
I felt my heart break. I couldn’t hear a thing; not the flames that crackled and whipped around us, not Izzy and Lilly’s open mouthed caterwauling off in the distance or the crack-of-doom rupturing of the ground beneath my feet.
I know Death better than anyone on earth. I know what it feels like and how it tastes. I know the eternal agony of life’s final instant and the horrid shift that takes place during the nano-second that life ends. I’ve felt it happen far too many times, and I remember each and every time and precisely how each one felt.
There’s not a wound or illness around that I can’t heal, but I can’t heal Death. No one can.
You’re not just anyone.
I can’t heal Death.
Says who?
It’s just not
possible!
You can give Death; you’ve spent a lot of time proving that. So why not, just as a change of pace, give Life instead?
…???...
…but, only God…
…that’s right
sunshine…time to step forward and take the final plunge.
But I’m not God!
Do you love her?
You know I do.
How much?
What?
Death says you’re
still a whining impotent little puss who can’t do shit!
Fuck Death! She’s MINE and he CAN’T have her!
Then show the cocksucker just how much you love her! Stop hiding in the goddamned shadows and show the world exactly who and what you are.
I gathered the river up in my hands and forced it into the rings I’d placed within my little lover. It was like shoving a python that hadn’t eaten in a couple of years into a pair of extremely tiny nylons, and putting the river of blood and bone into the rings turned out to be the easy part. The rings, as they absorbed more and more of those liquefied emotions, began glowing like a white-hot furnace; searing my lungs with its super-heated fumes, parboiling my eyes poaching my skin. And it still wasn’t enough.
I felt Peggy slipping farther and farther away; despite my best efforts her life, her precious essence, was dissipating like cigarette smoke into the ether.
NO GODDAMNIT!
I followed the river into her rings, grabbed the trailing edges of her life, twisted my fingers around those delicate ethereal fringes and refused to let go. One millimeter at a time I began threading Peggy’s life ribbon in and around her blazing rings, lacing and knotting for all I was worth.
Cold skeletal claws raked along the back of my neck, ripped at the bare skin and flesh of my shoulders, dug deeply and ceaselessly into my body, trying to break my concentration, trying to break my hold on the delicate and priceless ribbon in my hands. The pain was indescribable and unrelenting. Nothing in my experience could have possibly prepared me for the kind of pain I was subjected to. It was worse than physical, beyond emotional; my mind was incapable of comprehending what was happening…it was pain only the soul could experience.
I wanted to scream, to weep, to beg, curl up and surrender…I wanted it to be over and done with. I never wanted to hurt so much ever again.
I wanted Peggy more.
I twisted her ribbon one final time, forming the final knot just as those cold jagged fingers closed irrevocably around my pounding heart and squeezed.
I whirled around and came face to face with…myself. Grimacing and grinning like a maniacal idiot.
The flames in my eyes crystallized and lumps of burning ice formed.
You think I’m intimidated? I snarled into the pasty white soulless mockery of my features. You think I’m scared of you, you symbolic skull-faced FUCK? I’ll give you something to be scared of!
Blue-white bolts of serrated lightning exploded from my chest, ripping out in all directions, slashing about like frenzied and infuriated extra arms.
The bolts wrapped themselves around the curved outer edges of Peggy’s rings, which grew larger and larger by the moment, until they seemed to fill my universe. And as her rings increased, the bolts pulled me along with them, stretching and elongating my body until I was only fractionally less immense than the rings themselves.
I spread my arms out as far as they would go. My finger tips grazed the inner surface of the rings, still burning with white-hot intensity, hissing and screeching from the internal pressure of what I can only think of in terms of nuclear reactions. The heat and cold from my body, along with the small flashes of tiny finger bolts burnt scared the searing inner surface, and I smiled a death’s head smile.
Then I linked with Peggy’s rings and fed my life into them, welding her life force, and my own, together for all time.
You want her; you’ll have to take me as well. And you can’t, can you?
The universe went silent.
I didn’t think so…
The flames stilled.
Come on, you
pussy! Do it! I dare you!
The cold fingers around my heart unclenched and withdrew, reluctantly.
…limp-dick sonofabitch—now…FUCK OFF! I don’t want to see your sorry ass again unless I call you.
And then the damndest thing
happened—the universe nodded its collective head…at least that’s what it felt
like to me. It was a feeling so peculiar
that I can’t even begin to describe precisely how it felt, apart from giving me one hell of a case of vertigo for
about ten seconds.
The flames around us vanished with an inverted whoosh! and I found myself standing in the early dusk of evening, my feet on either side of a fissure some two feet wide and four feet deep that ran from the trees all the way to the sun deck behind our house.
Peggy stirred for a moment, opened her eyes, her pale grey eyes, smiled up at me for an instant of perfect understanding and then quickly fell asleep. I hugged her to me and wept like a baby…