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Day 4
I wanted him to kill me.
James' toneless words followed me far into my dreams; they appeared like floating, disembodied letters in the darkness of my mind. I hadn't been able to pinpoint at the time why they'd made my skin crawl, but now it struck me loud and clear. Lacing every syllable of his last sentence had been the terrible and honest hopelessness I had always feared would happen to me.
As if in answer to the fear suddenly inside me, the sharp sound of a slap echoed from the darkness. Half-awake, I grinned. This was where Joyce slapped the s**t out of him.
The slap stunned him and, from what little experience I had with his non-violent friend, caught him completely off guard. Joyce's flushed face stood out the most as she screamed at him.
"You're such a dumbass!” And then a sob slipped past her lips.
I felt like an a*****e just by watching the raw hurt and anger color her face. All this time I'd only seen a kind of stifled fear in her eyes, like mine. Now, hell hath no fury like a girl utterly pissed off.
I opened my eyes to a set of trees swathed in darkness. Someone approached me from between two shadowy tree trunks and had broken a few twigs coming over. It was James, ready to hand me the next thirty minute shift. I wasn't sure how pleased I was to see the guy so soon.
I got up wordlessly and started past him. Surprisingly, he touched my shoulder as I passed by as if physically passing off a burden to me. I'd taken him as the sort of guy who sat on the edge of his bus seat when seated next to strangers, hoping no knees or elbows touched, so this gesture caught me off guard a little.
I nodded, though I doubted that he saw me.
No doubt about it, James had been ready to die when we found him, but if pulling four night shifts in a row was any indicator of his mental state then things were looking better already. I also couldn't help but wonder how long Joyce might've spent watching him during those shifts. She didn't believe he could turn over a new leaf so quickly. But, honest to God, as I remembered the savage way the dog's skull had caved in under my bat, I felt strongly that two things rang true.
I risked my life for him and I saved his sorry a** from getting chewed off by a dog infected with the very nightmare that had taken away all our lives. Never again would we get them back. All we could do now was survive.
If only it were that easy.
...
I had one last dream that night, before daybreak. I sat in my mom's living room with all the lights on, including an over-sized chandelier that I'd never seen before, and suddenly my small apartment had become a large ballroom. The chandelier towered above my head. I blinked to see Joyce in front of me, dressed in the same clothes she had when I met her not too long ago, and offered her hand so we could dance, even though I had two left feet. James stood in a corner holding something. I couldn't see what it was but it must've be an instrument because where else was the music coming from?
I watched myself trip over something invisible, seamlessly changed to seeing the dance from third-person, watching myself stumbling to the music. I spied another person in a corner. It was Keke.
So that's where...
He played his violin like a professional. He'd taken lessons for nearly five years after all. He wore very familiar clothes, almost too familiar. The fabric looked a little ragged. In fact, now that I'd noticed the state of his clothes, other details began sticking out; the stiff and unreasonable swinging of his head with every stroke of the bow, the tears along the seams of his shirt as if hands had clawed cruelly at them. But, most unnerving of all, I saw the stains.
I knew what they were, where they'd come from, and what had happened after Keke had gotten them. The bullet wound glared at me from his forehead.
Too much. Stop. So I closed my eyes and the ballroom winked out.
My dream drowned in black.
It hadn't been the clothes. I knew. Or the stains. It hadn't even been the open wound. No, what it had been was much, much worse.
Suddenly his face appeared in front of me, dead dead dead, and I heard a faint screaming in my head somewhere.
He had worn the same crooked smile the day I killed him.
 shoyou100 · Wed Aug 20, 2008 @ 11:56pm · 0 Comments |
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