Ashes Remain

by Alethea Stauron

He pauses on the loft and slowly pivots toward her. His body language is struggling to act normal with shoulders drooping, and eyes dropped. “Yeah,” his voice shakes out as if weighing ten tons from his lips.

  She holds the banister to look at him. “I need to talk to you about something. Well… a couple things,” and studies the way he acts. His lids are puffy, eyes red, and hands trembling. “Drake? What’s wrong with you? I thought you were feeling better.”

  He produces a broken, “I’ve been crying.”

  “Crying? Are you okay,” she asked, “Where have you been?”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “My fault,” her hand floats to her chest.

  He says, “My life, Jojo. I’m just so lonely after losing my fiancé.” He takes a step toward his room, “I just wanna lay down. A real man don’t much like borrowing from others. I have no choice… right?”

  She swallows what she was going to say for one more conversation. “Wait,” running her pity upstairs and she hugs him, “You poor thing. I’m sorry it’s been difficult. At least you look better.”

  “Thanks.” Drake smiles against her ear, “You’re too kind.”

  “Maybe…” she connects his gaze after his lips flatten, “… it’d make you feel better to join me for a party this weekend? You’ve been invited.”

  “Party?” He shakes his head, “No. No more parties. I’m partied out. I’m still recovering.”

  “We have a few days.” She lets go of him, “My friends haven’t really met you. They just bought a house and we’re gonna have a barbecue.” Her teeth flashed behind a raising smile, “It’ll get you out of the house. It’s in a nice neighborhood with friendly people and great atmosphere. What do you say to free food?”

  “Sure.” He takes a step toward his room, “Sounds like it’ll help me get my mind off of Patricia.”

  “Yes, Drake.” She watches his back trailing away from her, “This’ll help you other than thinking about her.”

  Drake asks, “When did you say it was again,” and swivels back.

  “Saturday at six-thirty. You’ll have to leave at six because of construction.”

  “Okay. I’ll be ready at six then.”

  She walks midway downstairs, “Oh… that’s right. I’m leaving early, but I’ll leave you directions on the fridge. It won’t be hard to find.”

  “We’re not riding together,” peeking his face through a crack in his door.

  “I’m leaving early,” she shrugs, “I’ll greet you at the door at six-thirty sharp.”

  Saturday arrives and Lucius watches Josephine sleeping. He’s been watching her for hours, thinking of the latest news from Artie. The fact that there is no news. Lucius wonders if any of his transmissions are being received, if any answer will ever reach him. He’s reduced to staring with his lonely mind needing comfort. “You’re so beautiful that my chest burns when I watch you.”

  He strokes the tip of her ear, “Sleep a little. Just enough so I can hear your voice,” placing her into a light sleep. “I know it’s dangerous to put you in this kind of sleep, but I’m dying on the inside. I need to feel you hold me. I can hardly take it anymore. I just need to feel you hold me one more time. Just something to get me by.” Lucius wraps around her in bed. “I’m so restless watching you. So close, but not allowed… not allowed to…” He squeezes her, “I’m so desperate to hold you.” A tear rolls down his cheek, wetting her jawline. “You’ve broken me, baby. I’m begging for answers about us. You don’t even know who I am and you’ve managed to kidnap every part of my heart. I’m not the same person I was before. If you could see who I was, I'd surrender it all for you. There’s a secret about me…”

  He kisses her cheek, and sniffles, “… something that exposes who I am if you look upon me with the right light.” And immediately regrets his words. “Please don’t be angry with me when I explain who I am. I wouldn’t be able to take it. Not from you. I never meant for any of this to happen. I can’t change who I was, but I’m different now. From the moment I saw you, I knew I was in trouble.” He studies her lashes laid across her cheeks, “I’m just a guy in love with you. That’s all I wanna be. Holding you forever. Your husband.”

  Her jaw stretches.

  He exhales, “I love you,” and closes his eyes. “I’m tempted even now… to wake you. To beg for this torture to end.” He rests his lips against hers, “I need your counsel in your dreams. I need to talk to you. Baby, make it a good moment for me,” hoping for her dream he’s planted to sprout. “I wanna feel you kissing me, baby. But… please… spend time with me. Please help me be strong,” and opens his bio empathic ability. Entering her mind completely as a Gamerin. Wholly experiencing what she sees, feels, and wants. Leaving himself vulnerable, trusting in her arms, and hoping he’ll have strength to do the right thing as he has many times before.

  ◆◆◆

  She dreams she’s waking up beside him. So real. Soothing him. Nourishing him, as something he longs for with her. He takes hold of her, breathing deep, heart pounding, lightheaded, and asks, “Hold me?”

  “Lucius,” their tongues touch and she’s embracing him. She’s locking him tightly in her arms, and in real life, squeezing him closer in bed. Increasing the experience. Increasing his motivation for her comfort.

  “Baby, I’m here,” he fights waking her, “I’m beside you. But you don’t understand.”

  “I do.”

  “As best as you can I guess.”

  Josephine’s thoughts are drifting in a deep pool and quickly sucking him in. “I understand that I wanna give myself to you.” She wants more and Lucius senses it. She says, “I wanna make love and feel you without you disappearing again.”

  He feels the desire and he’s fighting it. “I can’t hold you when you think like that. I’m too sensitive right now. I wanna hold you,” his body begs, “Help me be strong?”

  She pulls him closer, “Lucius,” softly called in his ear.

  His resistance becomes absent. “Josephine, you don’t know what you’re doing when you’re with me.” He’s bubbling a moan, knowing exactly what she’s dreaming. The warmth of her body is starting to fill in the gaps of his imagination and he’s sweating. He’s sweating more when her leg wraps around his hip. “Baby, wait. We can’t do that. Just hold me.” But he knows her dreams by now. The desires of her heart are going to play out and he would be left guilty.

  Lucius exits her dream with the thread of resistance he has left. Less and less he speaks to her. His moments to enjoy her company have become mere seconds. The pull to complete their union has grown too much.

  “I know we’ve come too far for me to ask such restraint from you.” He gathers her arm swathed behind him, helping to release her grip from around his body. “You’ve experienced us making love countless times in your heart… but… I can’t do what you’re dreaming about. Not even to daydream about it. They read my mind. He reads my mind, and it’s the same as the actual deed. I’d be guilty. More guilty with you this vulnerable and asleep during the bond.” He nestles her arm between them, “I wish I could satisfy you like that. I miss your company.” He’s almost out of breath looking at her, “Maybe someday? Someday with you fully aware.”

  He rubs his fingers across her heavy breathing lips, “I watch you every night. Every day. When you wake up, this’ll all feel like a dream to you. For me… this is a torturous existence. Everything I want and need but never truly experiencing what I want and need. Dreams. Only moments with you in dreams.” He gazes up toward sunbeams rising over a canopy. A glowing window pane shines catty cornered from them. “If it isn’t the key to revealing who I am to you… also known as… the thorn in my side when we first met. The light I was talking about. The revealer of secrets. Sunrise. Sunset.”

  He walks toward the window, inches from a glistening shine of morning rays. “If only you’d see me as the light touches earth where it is now then you’d know. If you knew I was here during…” glancing at her, “sunrise or
sunset. You’d see me. Who I really am? Completely exposed to you,” and his vision casts down. “I’m scared of what you’d think of me. What kind of terrifying armed brute… or beast… I might appear like to you?” And Lucius leaves her room.

  ◆◆◆

  Josephine works against her mind, trying to stay within the sound of his voice. His presence. His arms. The special sleep is wearing off the more she fights it. Just as he had intended before. A form of keeping himself from a mistake while she was sleeping. She breathes deeply, stretching her arms above her head, “Lucius,” she called from her dream. He’s outside listening as grass trundles under his feet. She says, “No,” and her head pops up from her pillow, “Don’t go.”

  Her words fell on him. Over his feet and weighing him down. “Baby.” He glances up at her window from across the street. Standing in the field outside of Mr. Gonzales’s old property. A cool morning greets the grass with dew before the sun rises completely. He’s paused in an overgrown patch, but listening. “I’m here,” he whispered. “And I’m not leaving you.” His traveling feet move sluggishly through shadows of the trees, making his way toward the warmth of sunrise on his skin. For his morning reminder of who he is.

  “Everything felt so real just then,” she said. The light brushes across her fingertips over the blanket, “That was the strangest dream. Started out nice, but ended strange.” She jumps from bed, taking in the rays blinding her face from anything else, and stands beside the window. Secret, she thought. Curtains sit inches from her eyes. “There was something. Something about the light… and you. You’re not a monster, or beast, or whatever.” Her tired eyes travel through the panes with the move of the curtains.

  “Oh… my…” she’s completely frozen by what she sees. “Lucius!”

  Lucius restricts a step. Stopping altogether. A couple feet from walking in dawn’s glow, “Oh… crap,” he panted. He knows it. He feels it. “She’s watching me,” his chest fell with wind leaving his lungs. “Not now.”

  “Lucius, wait. Lucius, wait for me. He can’t hear me. Hurry, Josephine!” She’s chanting as she snatches her blue jeans before running downstairs.

  He races for cover… hoping, “Maybe she’ll believe it was a dream. That dream state is supposed to be described as a hallucination — I hope anyway.”

  Josephine jets downstairs, grabbing her boots and is out the door in under ten seconds. “Baby! Lucius!”

  He ducks low to the ground as she’s crossing the street. “What have I done,” thrashing his lack of wisdom, “Why do you start this stuff when you know you can’t finish it?” His eyes comb for any enemy troops that might be lurking nearby, “Hope no one shows up,” and huddles lower, almost prostrate behind a bundle of Johnson grass and aloe. “Please don’t say my name? Baby, please don’t say my name? Not out here. Never in the open.”

  Josephine tracks a bending trail through overgrown areas beneath her. Dew covered grass sweeps over denim jeans, painting wet marks around her calves. She focuses on every movement with her eyes moving faster than her body, until, stopping in the center of the open lot. “Lucius?”

  He’s slamming his eyes and grabbing a pounding chest from leaping out at her. “You can’t help her if she knows you’re here.”

  “Lucius…” she spins around, nearly choking on her breath, “Where are you? Are you upset with me? You don’t understand. He’s just my renter.” Her voice becomes too delicate to speak, “Just my renter.”

  A breeze blows her hair and Lucius inhales her fragrance. He swallows his voice down, “Hallucination like dreams, my eye.” His arms cross over his chest, anchoring his desire.

  She whispers, “Please say that was real?” Josephine stands in the tall grass, wiping sleep from her lashes. But soon realizes, “I was only dreaming.” Lucius’s muscles relax with her words. Her expression plummets over spring sprouts, “A hallucination. That’s all you were. A dream.” Josephine traces her fingers over wet tops of tall wildflowers and uncut straw. She enters the lit area of the empty lot and turns east toward a saluting sun. “Sunrise,” she said. “Something about the sunrise and sunset. My dreams are like fairytales nowadays,” and shakes off her imaginary world. “I miss you. My mind is trying to make sense of it because I miss you.” She picks the top of a dandelion, “I had a good dream though.”

  “She’s thinking of me.” He enters her thoughts as she daydreams. “We’re dancing.” And his lips crescent, “A wedding dance.” Seeing every movement clearly, just as she imagines in her mind. Without physical contact, he can’t feel the experience or smell it, but he experiences her love just fine. A pure moment without him needing to leave. The precious time he was desperately begging her for. He hears the music perfectly. He senses her arms over him. “Yes, baby. I need this time with you.”

  She curtsies. “Hello…” acting out her fantasy in a field of daydreams, “Lucius, my love. Of course, I’ll dance with you,” and imagines them holding each other and dancing through tall grass.

  “My heart.” He says, “She does this without trying.” And he absorbs every moment. Every moment she pours over him, nourishing cracks and painful doubt. Cracks over his soul. Erasing every crack with every sweet gesture and sway of her body in innocence. “I love how you do this. You repair me. I wish I could touch you, but this is just as good.”

  Several minutes of her daydream eases out as the song of her heart finishes playing. She lies on a warm patch that the sun has partially dried of morning dew. “I wish you were here with me.”

  “I am. Not dressed in a tuxedo… but… I am here,” whispered to himself. “And I needed that.”

  Josephine says, “I had a dream about you,” and giggles.

  “She’s imagining me next to her. Alright. I’ll play.”

  She asks, “Can you guess what happened?”

  His brows lift, “I can guess pretty good actually.” He touches his chin, “Maybe I kissed you? I did less than I wanted to. A lot less than what you —

  “I made love to you.”

  He covers his face, “Yes,” smiling uncontrollably and blushing into a pomegranate shade. “I know. I’m trying to be a gentleman. I wasn’t gonna say it out loud.”

  She rubs her lips, “It always feel so real at first. Your warm body holds me every night. You’re holding me… up until… the best moment. The moments where you… well… it feels like you’re missing somehow during that segment of dreaming. It’s hard to explain but I understand it by now. I know when it’s about to happen.”

  “You couldn’t possibly understand.”

  And she explains, “Your love showers me. You’re always wanting more, but resisting. Always resisting. I know the moment by now. By the time I try and resist where my dream is headed…”

  He brushes his lips and catches a whiff of his sleeve, “I smell you on me. All over me.” He tucks his chin into his shirt, continuing to listen to her, but inhaling her scent.

  “The ground is cold,” she said. “I don’t think this spot was as dry as I thought it was.”

  “Go inside, Baby.” He glances over with his collar over his nose, “I’m better now. Much better.”

  Her eyes stare straight up at a fluffy patch in the sky, as a stomach growl interrupts her time. The moment has reached its peak. And they’re both floating in the imaginary where truth can be found. A second grumble and, “Ugh… I guess it’s time to go inside.” She climbs out of her squashed section of overgrowth and mismatched wildflowers. Abruptly, she stops and leans down to pick up dandelion sprouts. Her knees rest over green patches and blows white-laced seeds.

  “This is who you are…” he sighs, “an innocent child.” She watches several white dots take flight and Lucius is left with the realization, “This is the you I am trying to protect. A pure-hearted creature. I won’t fail her.”

  Josephine opens her refrigerator. Nippy air brushes her bare feet as she piles ingredients for a frittata. “I’m not gonna make this the way he did, but I can come close,” she sai
d.

  Lucius leans in the sunlight outside her nook. “I’d eat anything you make for me right now,” rubbing his stomach. He opens an interdimensional pocket over his thigh. “Let’s see what I got for today,” pulling a bread roll with melted cheese over it, “Thank God for Artie.” He picks comfort food apart and tears into it with a hearty bite. “Harvesters are skilled cooks,” he smacked.

  Through a few walls, “Thanks,” Artie answered.

  Lucius huffs a smile. “Forgot you were listening.”

  “Only when you’re close enough,” Artie reminded him. “I’m not as powerful as you. Tough to hear through walls but you’re only twenty feet from me… so.”

  “You’re powerful too. We’re all limited here, like a dagger in my backside.”

  “Thank goodness for our equipment then,” Artie added. “Speaking of which, how are your batteries holding up?”

  “Haven’t had to change them yet,” and pauses to listen as Josephine preheats her oven. She chops vegetables and makes a comment of whether she’s doing it right or not. Lucius glances over, “Pretty much. Mainly eggs, baby.”

  “You still trying to master that frittata I make?”

  Lucius snickers, “I’ve mastered it. I think.”

  “Didn’t sound convincing just then,” and Artie hears Lucius chuckling under his breath.

  Coffee brews in the kitchen. Aroma emanates throughout the house, crawling like a thick cloud to the resident upstairs. Drake slowly awakens. Artie leans against the wall and uses psychic communication, “He’s awake.”

  “You mean… it’s awake,” Lucius wobbles a disdainful jaw, “I guess it was bound to happen.”

  “Lucius,” Artie said.

  “I know. I know. Play nice with the little furry ones.”

  Artie breathes deep, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “You really don’t like this guy.”

  “What gave you that idea?”