Wrath and Ruin

by C W Briar

  “Child, that dead man was your old body, and the blood spilled on you was my own. That blood has made you innocent.”

  How had Law’s blood gotten on me before I attacked him, and how did it make me innocent?

  The fading shadow released me and withdrew down toward Elis, who shouted the same questions I was thinking. “Innocent? From blood? He murdered you.”

  I could feel and hear my crime as if I were committing it a second time. The sensation of breaking Law’s skull reverberated in my hand. Pangs of guilt and horror overwhelmed me. The thought of throwing myself into the pit and accepting my punishment flashed in my mind.

  “He’s right. I tried to kill you.”

  Law smiled at me, wrinkling the ugly, scabrous scar on his face. The look in his eyes soothed me like a balm. “You did kill me, but I live again. Can a man be guilty of murder if the victim still lives? Can a victim not offer forgiveness?”

  I jerked with pain as a flying rock cracked against my shoulder blade. Elis had thrown it. He was readying to throw another one at me, but before he could, my fingers slipped.

  I didn’t fall. Law held me by my arm. I swayed over the fiery depths as he carried me out of the pit. Elis, meanwhile, retreated from us, crawling like a beaten animal into a cave near the bottom.

  My memory began to heal, and—I remembered what happened to me.

  I had been shot in another life. Elis had been standing there, watching. He was also the one who attacked me in this world, striking my head with a rock as I passed through the dry, red land. He’d wounded my memory, then deceived me when I awoke.

  Elis stared at me with narrow, hateful eyes.

  When Law pulled me up over the precipice of the pit, I discovered a remade world. The eager dawn had arrived, and the broad, golden sun poured its light over the land. I had never seen such radiance before. Its gleam made the sun of my old life seem like a flickering candle by comparison.

  Green fields and hills had replaced the barrenness. Men and women filled the grassy plains like spring blossoms. They danced, sang, and laughed with one another. Streams wrote flowing poems over the landscape, and trees tossed flower-petal confetti into their waters.

  I felt joy as vibrant as a gust of wind. The world’s beauty could never be sufficiently described with words, nor could it be fully viewed by eyes alone. Elis’s domain was gone. Law’s could no longer be restrained. I wanted to run and leap across this new land, but I stayed put, fixated by the wonders around me.

  Law produced a white book. When he held it in front of me, the first of my many happy tears fell on its cover. He opened it and pointed to the writing on the first page.

  “Your name is in here,” he said. “Do you wish to remember it?”

  I nodded, unable to speak or temper my smile.

  “The message written here is, ‘Jacob, my child, welcome home.’”

  Lust

  A key jostled in Dave’s apartment door.

  Dave lurched forward in his chair as if someone had shouted “Boo!” He grabbed at his computer mouse, fumbling it, but still managed to close his web browser in time. Seconds later, his wife, Brynn, rushed into the apartment and passed by his office.

  “What are you doing back already?” he asked with the accusatory scorn of a prosecutor. Dave glanced over his shoulder to make sure Brynn wasn’t standing in the doorway with arms crossed and eyes aflame.

  “You would know if you answered your phone,” she yelled from the kitchen. Every word sizzled with ire. “I called, like, five times.”

  Dave turned his muted phone over. Two missed calls. She was exaggerating, as always. He emptied his lungs with a long sigh, then walked to the hallway to see what Brynn was doing. There was no point in waiting to get chewed out for whatever new mistake had angered her.

  She was shoving the contents of their junk drawer back and forth, knocking pens and a bottle opener onto the ground. A sticky note flew out and clung to her blue pencil skirt until she brushed it off.

  “Where are my office keys?” she asked. Now she was the one who sounded like a prosecutor.

  “I haven’t seen them,” he said coolly. She had probably lost them. At least, he hoped it was her own fault this time so he didn’t get blamed—Oh shoot, I think I did see them!

  “I checked, and they’re not in my purse,” Brynn said.

  “Did you dig all the way to the bottom?”

  “I checked!” She slammed the drawer. The Rocky Mountain postcard inside of it, the one they had purchased on their honeymoon, got bent between the drawer and countertop.

  Answering the way he wanted to would have triggered another shouting match. Instead, Dave moved about the kitchen, tipping and sliding objects on the counter to look behind them. Brynn did the same with even greater urgency. Her frizzled brown hair chased after her as she rushed to the dining table.

  Dave eyed her for a second. They were now in their thirties, and she looked the part. She had changed in their four years of marriage, more than he would have predicted. Wrinkles and pounds were beginning to accumulate, but even more disappointing were the all-too-common spats that always seemed to be his fault.

  Brynn huffed and snatched a pair of keys from under the mail he had promised to go through. She brandished them as she hurried to the front door. “Thanks. Now I’m going to be late for work.”

  Dave interlocked his fingers in his hair and squeezed the top of his head. He had tossed the mail on top of the keys.

  I am such a screwup.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll get through the mail today.”

  “Sure,” Brynn replied sarcastically. She pointed at his office as she marched by it. “You said that yesterday, just like you said you’d get started on that new ad project.”

  “I’ll finish at least one of the edits today.”

  She didn’t look back or acknowledge his promise.

  He called out, “Bye,” but received only a banged door in reply. Their framed wedding photograph tipped on its nail.

  Dave went back to his office. The plain, white Photoshop document on his computer screen attested to his recent procrastination. He needed to get started in order to make his deadline, but lately, he couldn’t maintain his focus for more than a few minutes at a time. Worrying about this latest fight with his wife would certainly not help.

  He leaned toward the window of their sixth-floor Philly apartment and stared down the narrow one-way street, watching the subway station for Brynn. Dozens of people dressed in everything from suits to scrubs were shuffling outdoors, marching to their daily grinds at offices, restaurants, and hospitals. A man talking on his cell phone finished his coffee and tossed the paper cup under a parked Camry.

  Brynn jogged into view with her purse looped over her shoulder. She reached the subway station just ahead of the man on the phone and hurried down the stairs.

  There wasn’t any way to fix her morning, but he thought for a moment how he could make it up to her. Dinner. If he made enough progress on his work by mid-afternoon, he would have time to cook something she liked. Mushroom risotto would buy him some relief—unless she got chewed out by her boss for being late. What then? He would have a headache and a half on his hands if that happened.

  Sudden movement in the corner of Dave’s eye drew his attention upward. A black feather hung outside his window, stuck on a dewy, lacelike curtain of cobwebs. It fluttered gently and rhythmically like a subway rider swaying to music in their earphones. Birds, usually pigeons, often gathered on the fire escape outside his window, but none were perched there at that time. The feather must have come from a crow flying overhead. Dave peered up at the strip of blue sky between his apartment and the one across the street.

  Instead of birds, he spotted someone, a young woman, standing on the roof of the other apartment building. He couldn’t see much of her due to the brick parapet atop the wall, but he spied her pale, bare shoulders and a bit of black sleeve on one arm. Silken, raven hair hung straight as a plumb line down her back. Bec
ause she was looking away, only a narrow portion of her face was visible, but the glimpse of her petite ear and sloped jaw was enough to recognize she was stunning.

  The woman’s beauty and mystique lingered long after she moved out of view. Dave continued to think about her, drawing in the remainder of her face and body with his imagination. When he pulled up the same porn site he had been visiting before Brynn interrupted him, he looked for girls that resembled the one warming his mind.

  The distractions delayed the start of his work until lunchtime, when hunger gnawed him out of his daze. The afternoon proved more productive, with fear serving as his primary motivation. He didn’t want to defend another wasted day to Brynn, nor could he risk begging his agency for another deadline extension.

  Dave was nearly finished with his second digital facelift when he heard the door to their apartment open. He checked the clock and mentally kicked himself for not having started dinner in time to surprise Brynn.

  She stopped at his office door. Fortunately, she was holding a bag of Mexican takeout, and she actually seemed rather happy to see him, as if she were in the afterglow of a long laugh.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “You got some work done today.”

  That’s it? The first thing out of her mouth is a backhanded compliment for working. Dave leaned back in his chair, pleased to show off his progress on an ad featuring a tall, slender bottle of vodka and a similarly proportioned model. Still, it irked him she didn’t bother to at least greet him first.

  “This is actually my second project.” He pointed his stylus at the bagged burrito harvest hanging from her hand. “Takeout again?”

  “Yeah, I’m just too exhausted to worry about dinner tonight. If you want something else, make it yourself.”

  Dave followed her as she carried their dinner to the kitchen and set it on the counter. “Actually, I had planned on making risotto.”

  “Hmm, that would have been nice.”

  “What do you mean by that?” The last word came out more defensively than he intended.

  Brynn rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean anything by it. It would have been like the old days, is all. Like when we were dating.” She opened the cupboard and pulled out two plates. “Is this okay for tonight?”

  “Yeah. Burritos are fine.”

  Dave opened the refrigerator and stooped to search for the hot sauce. He lingered inside the open door, cold air spilling over his legs. His mind wandered and tripped over the memory of the dark-haired girl. She hadn’t reappeared since the sighting that morning—he had checked often enough to be certain of that. Was she a new resident of the neighboring building? Could he see her apartment from his own?

  The refrigerator dinged, reminding him to shut the door.

  “It’s on the top shelf,” Brynn said.

  He pulled out the bottle of red hot sauce. “Thanks.”

  She slid his dinner to him. “I’m sorry I got angry this morning. The good news is I managed to catch my train, barely. I was a little sweaty when I made it to work, but on time. The rest of the day actually went pretty well.”

  “Good, and sorry about the keys.” Dave smiled at her, though out of relief rather than joy. Perhaps she wouldn’t spend the next few days reminding him of his mistake, after all.

  She unrolled her burrito and picked out the slices of onion from the fillings. Dave shook his head. She hated onions, but even more she hated telling restaurant employees to customize her order and not add them. Over the years, the quirk had grown into a peeve for him. Despite his insistence, she refused to “inconvenience” the workers. Whenever they ate out together, he appended a request for no onions onto her order, much to her embarrassment.

  “I ran into Mrs. Hill on my way upstairs,” Brynn said, “and we chatted for a few minutes. She invited us down for tea.”

  “For tea? Who still does that?”

  “She’s an old lady, and she lives alone. She’s trying to be nice.”

  Dave tipped his head back, his mouth half full of pork and rice. “She’s going to make you religious.”

  “Is that what bothers you so much about her?”

  Mrs. Hill, who lived in the apartment below theirs, was the quintessential elderly neighbor. She always dressed up and wrapped her gray hair in a kerchief even when just stepping out to collect her mail.

  “She pries into people’s business. I can’t ride the elevator with her without being interrogated about my life, or being told ‘God bless you.’ I feel like I’m living upstairs from a nun.”

  His wife tossed an amused and patronizing expression at him. “A nun? Are you afraid she’s going to hear us in bed and come chase us with a ruler?”

  Dave grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. “I’ll pass on the tea.”

  Brynn rolled her dinner into a sloppy, misshapen likeness of what it used to be. “It would be nice to spend time with you, even if it is just tea.”

  “I don’t want to hang out down there.”

  She sighed and sucked her fingertip clean. “Fine. Maybe next time. She said her door is always open to us.”

  Dave snorted in amusement and carried his dinner toward his office. Like Mrs. Hill, the invitation wasn’t likely to get more attractive any time soon.

  He managed to complete more work in between fruitless glances at the other building’s rooftop. By the time Brynn returned from Mrs. Hill’s downstairs apartment, his eyes ached from the hours spent staring at the screen. Still, it felt good to be productive after his recent slump. Maybe, after weeks of struggling, he was finally getting on track.

  Brynn asked him to join her in bed, but the invitation resulted in disappointment. When it became apparent through multiple spurned cuddles that the evening wouldn’t progress beyond Netflix and sleep, he stole away to his office. He stared at the rooftop and scanned every visible window, searching for the mystery girl. After a long while, he pulled up videos on the internet. He knew how to find what he wanted there.

  ***

  He dreamed about her that night. Not his wife, but the unidentified, fair-skinned beauty with obsidian hair. She wasn’t on the roof, but rather walking about his apartment. He saw more of her body this time. Much more. The dream ended abruptly when his wife rolled against him and woke him up.

  Wednesday and Thursday passed without sight of her, and he began to worry she had been visiting someone and wouldn’t return. But on Friday she appeared, like before, during the minutes after Brynn departed for work. Unfortunately, he again failed to glimpse her face, but he did hear the indistinct yet musical hint of her voice. It could have been a song, or poetry, or the joyful retelling of a favorite story. Whatever he heard, the sound of it matched the tantalizing beauty of his mystery girl.

  When she moved out of sight, he raised the window and listened for her. The high, flowing voice was fading, its final wisps echoing like a humming chime in the narrow street.

  A taxi honked, interrupting the sound. The melodious whisper was gone. A crow feather tumbled from the sky and fluttered into his apartment through the open window.

  He failed to learn anything more about the girl over the weekend, as errands and other responsibilities kept him busy. She reappeared regularly, but only in his thoughts. The fantasies interrupted him as he shopped for groceries or tried to carry on conversations with Brynn. Every time he spotted a woman with long black hair, he stopped to see if she was the one from the rooftop. None of them were.

  The girl of his literal and figurative dreams even flared up in his memory as he received some long overdue, though prosaic, sex from his wife. Later, as Brynn slept, he heard the musical voice and rose to check at the window for its source. The girl didn’t appear, and after a few minutes, he trudged back to his pillow, resigned to the possibility he might have only imagined her singing.

  Come morning, he heard her for certain.

  Brynn had left for work. She had been complaining about …? He couldn’t remember. His focus was in shambles. He had failed to prepare coffee for her
as he usually did, but that wasn’t it. His cereal remained uneaten and soggy, the bowl still surrounded by the milk he had spilled while pouring. The mysterious girl dominated his mind, interrupting his every thought.

  He was standing in his bathroom doorway, trying to remember if he had showered yet, when he heard the voice.

  Beyond a doubt, it wasn’t a memory of the song but the actual melody caressing his ears. He ran to the window and saw her lying on the parapet. She was positioned such that he could only see the top of her head. Her hair hung over the street.

  Dave threw open the window, slamming it against the top of the frame. The girl was cooing in her high-pitched voice. Her words, which were Latin or some other vaguely familiar language, blurred together into a seamless, lyrical dance. His pulse quickened when she bent one knee, raising her bare leg into sight. Her effervescent chorus gave him a sensation of weightlessness, and he felt as though he could lean outside and glide toward her like a balloon.

  He should fly to her. She was heaven. Perfection. Ecstasy. Everything in his life was anchoring him to the ground. His career, his apartment, his wife—they were the gravity keeping him from her. Keeping him from bliss.

  But no longer. Dave sprinted out of his apartment and up the stairs to the roof of his own building. He shoved open the door, hurried to the low, outer wall, and looked for her. She was gone. His beautiful mistress, the joy of his life, had vanished. A surge of multiple emotions punched his chest, and he didn’t know whether to sing back to her, to weep, or to jump from the rooftop and end his pitiful existence. Even her voice had vanished, and the ever-present murmur of the city had never sounded so ugly.

  The remainder of the day became a blur of misery and grief. He was vaguely aware of returning to his office, as though he were experiencing it in a vision. Except for a few moments of sharp, painful consciousness, he spent the hours listlessly seeking her voice through a mental fog. The one sense that kept him chained to reality was the smell of his apartment, which was sickeningly familiar.