12.
I felt like the trees; confined and lost in time. Nothing made sense. Why were we driving back? Jed had said they’d lost me at the gas station. Although my fall could have affected my memory, I was convinced I’d been running to save them. Jed with his drunken rages. Theresa with her sense of retribution. And Ben, helpless and sleepy, unaware of being caught in their stupid mess.
I needed to open a window. I needed to get out of this sweaty, whisky reeking car. Theresa’s hand suddenly crept over my own, as if she’d read my thoughts.
‘Please don’t go’ she whispered. Something in the fragility of her tone made me trust her.
I glanced at my hand again. I was trying frantically to remember who had placed that wedding ring on me.
The humming birds were gathered in evening song, and despite my body aching, I wanted desperately to be outside with them; to be free from this sense of anguish.
I suddenly looked over at Theresa’s hands. They were both free from adornment. I caught those sneering eyes in the wing mirror, and instantly knew it was Jed who had placed that band on my finger.
By eli regan, on blogspot
13.
A sharp, involuntary smile hooked my mouth. It was the same smile that twitched across my sister’s face, quick and cold, like the flash of a knife. Everything was confused. Theresa or me, and Jed’s intentions - I had no idea how we had come to this. Or how it all might end.
In my arms, Ben stirred and began to grizzle. He burrowed closer and I felt a new warmth flowering through my clothes. I thought of the cabin, and of the clearing. That spread of snow as clean as milk. Or a bright, new page, just waiting.
I shifted awkwardly, lifting the baby. “Take him,” I said.
My sister’s grin deepened. She shook her head, but eventually opened her arms and reluctantly reclaimed him. Eyes rolling.
In the driver’s seat, Jed chuckled. “Hey girl,” he said. “You’ve lost the plot.”
But I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t do this anymore. My fist was already on the handle. The door flew open.
The road swept by, thick and glittering like the rush and flood of melt-water. I didn’t wait for them to stop me. Within seconds, I was out.
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As I rolled into the ditch, the thought occurred, that playing Texas hold 'em with death, might not of been, Theresa's best move in judgment.
I heard her murmuring in the back of my new veins:
“How was she to know: he was the devil? "
Strangely, my sister’s logic strangled as mine.
In the car, Ben had sucked on my breast, as if feeding, off the floating essence, he felt from his true mother’s body.
The gentleman at the campsite swore that he played cards only for the baby.
Who trusts the word of death? How could my sister be seduced by death?
The agent offered Jed and Theresa a hefty price for Ben.
As my psyche tumbled to the juncture of the disappearance and fire, my breath pulses with forgotten truth.
I suspect the good-looking stranger took part of Theresa’s soul as collateral.
The savvy businessman convinced her that he was death eternal.
Why did she not suspect fowl play?
While I sat half-dressed in front of her husband, this body awkwardly stared at the visitor who seemed to recognize all our secrets.
And now, I ran, bleeding, with her body to play another round of cards.
(c-ray)
I couldn’t open my eyes. I could feel soft earth beneath my head, the cold sheet of snow beneath my outstretched hand. I pulled it toward me and felt my face. My eyes were covered with something. Pick, pick, pick with my broken fingernails.
While I picked, I listened. I could hear the wind outside and the creak of snow and burdened wood. There was a heaviness in my chest and I could hear the others breathing.
And the smell was everywhere. Sharp and cold like money. I couldn’t swallow. My mouth was dry, my lips cracked. I peeled thin strips of mucus from my eyes and opened one of them to harsh blue light.
There was a new sound. An old sound, half-remembered. A soft popping like snow melting under sunlight, uncovering bodies preserved in amber ice. Still the hurgh, hurgh of breathing.
All at once, my eyes were focused.
Soft earth became a hospital bed. Hurgh, hurgh and a breathing tube stopped my swallows. Melting snow was the soft beep of a heart monitor and my eyes – the one I had left – covered with burn dressings.
And the clink of handcuffs linked my wrist to the metal bed.
My head struck the road and forced it to bend, a whiplash oscillated outwards making the tarmac hum. The patterns came back to dance across my vision, a line of starlight pushing downwards and forcing the landscape to disappear.
I felt the thaw. A cold trickle was bringing me back to the cabin. I lay tied to the floor, something caked across my face, a substance painted the length of my body.
Drowsily turning my head to the left I catch Jed, covered in tarred blue feathers, a mirror stuck to his forehead and incense sticks burning between his fingers. I turn to the right and see fire crackling in a pot, small models of me and Jed suspended over the flames, a needle pushed through us. An acorn with a lipstick smile and tippex nappy smoldered in the embers.
And Theresa draped over a chair, naked, barely breathing, a beaded mask hanging half off her face.
And then a forth presence.
“Samedi takes his winnings.” The voice came from within nowhere.
“We had a deal” The words drift huskily from Theresa’s broken lungs, “She should be me.”
“You lost girl, your sister too strong for this magic. No promises. A roll of the dice, a turn of the cards, a spin of the wheel. You and the child belong to me now.”
Theresa was gone, the voice gone. Ben, who I had wanted so badly, who she had cast aside, gone also forever.
It was getting darker. I could hear Jed and Theresa’s car screeching. I needed to lose them. Could feel the desperation of a hunted animal. Needed to burrow myself in the nearest shrub. Didn’t even question my want of survival or not.
I jumped into a stream and let the tide take me downwards; my mind overflowing with unwanted echoes. Our old bed stinking of Theresa, three weeks after I married Jed. My recriminations. The shouting. Ben being born. The warped dreams of the cabin being our hideout, an escape from the world… And the night, yeah there it was, the night in the cabin where Theresa had given me wine and whispered: ‘This might make you a bit forgetful’.
And then, welcome memories. The strong whiff of homemade bread I had made in the mornings. The bustle of the 59 bus, laughing with Theresa before the fateful night we met ‘the cute bus driver’, as she had called Jed.
Suddenly I heard a rustling of leaves. Footsteps. Their unmistakable voices. I scrambled out of the water, and climbed an oak, clumsily but quickly.
I could hear their footsteps becoming fainter. For now I was just happy bingeing on air.
Our blog story has finished!!!
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(g'night)
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