by A L Hart
I stiffened. “I’m telling the truth.”
“Training to rid of dark energy in another vessel should not have caused her to attack you. So try again, what did you do to her?”
Right. The only time Ophelia could discharge dark energy was if she’d been provoked. Which left me in the midst with no viable explanation.
“She asked me to,” I lied again. “We were just—”
As if I didn’t already feel as if my head were being battered against an iron slab, a ferocious weight joined the riot in my brain, splitting me in two.
I gripped my head to keep everything inside and dropped to the floor, aware that I was screaming, but unable to care about anything beyond the pain. Roaring. Dissecting me. Breaking my skull apart. The wings at my back, I felt them crawling inside me, retracting under the barrage, as apparently peace wasn’t the only thing that caused them to retreat. So too did blinding agony.
The pain went on and on, and I ground my head into the floorboards, scrubbing it back and forth as though I could rattle the turmoil from its perimeters. It did nothing more than heighten it, stacking it higher and higher until I felt myself literally begin to tear apart—
It stopped just before the first rip, but the ringing in my ears held.
“In the future, Peter, you should know better than to lie to your mate. Our bond ties me to you in ways you’ll loathe as you discover them.”
My breathing excreted through my teeth in chittering, wet heaves, my entire body shaking with the memory of the pain.
Jera scooped Ophelia’s body into her arms effortlessly, looking down at me with a softer smile, something sad moving in her eyes, though I was sure I’d imagined it coming from this hellish creature. “Whatever the two of you did damaged your wings. The next time they extract, I would ice them. Tendon tears heal hideously and disfigurement is the last thing I wish to see when I take you.”
Take me?
My head pounded when I reached for understanding.
She left me there, spit dripping from my quivering lips, my words kept low and to myself. My anger towards her was nonexistent, my contempt buried by something much heavier, concerning, hammering our little disputes down to child’s play.
I watched Jera leave, but my eyes were on her sister.
Ophelia may have harbored ninety-eight percent of dark energy inside of herself, but there was something more inside of her.
Behind her heart, in that crystalized chamber hosting the source of her dark energy, existed something beyond a scope even Ophelia may have been aware of.
Something debased.
Wicked.
And very much alive.
******
The show must go on.
I’d never felt those words more strongly than I did just then. I was wiping down tables, taking orders and carting away dirty dishes in a work apron I hadn’t donned in too long.
Ophelia was on bedrest, aka. unconscious upstairs after Jera had stripped her of her old clothes, cleaned her and shoved the woman in her own black pajamas before burritoing her in blankets. We were one staff down and unsurprisingly, Minnie had called in sick today. It was a Friday. The day of the hippie-deluge, the amped requests of fancifully roasted beverages that generally backed us up even when fully staffed.
The five of us that were on shift—Roger, Jera, Danny, Kevin and myself—were scrambling around like chickens with our heads cut off.
I wished my head was cut off.
A splitting headache followed me everywhere I zipped, from table to table to kitchen to office.
Jera was just as busy in the kitchen, yet every time I entered, she was uncharacteristically calm, efficient and more in tune with the shop’s necessities than I was.
An added disparity: the phone was going off at all hours.
And it wasn’t customers looking for coffee.
It was the other brand. Those who harbored ridiculous requests. Warlocks who’d lost their lucky staff. Vampires who wished to have extended fangs. Demons of various mentioned castes who wished to heighten their sex drive, their hunger, and/or their ability to maintain their white-rage (which I didn’t even know what that meant) long enough to fully consume a human. I’d hung up the phone promptly. Countless times. Cursing whoever was responsible for giving out the shop’s number and accepting that I was probably going to have to change what had been a ten digit set of numbers that’d been in the family for years.
I was just hanging up on an incubus in tears—woed because he was unable to properly feed on children’s good dreams and give them nightmares instead—when my door barged open.
Kevin’s voice started up first. “Sir, you can’t just—”
“I’ll do what I please with this ol’ con man!” the old man shouted at Kevin who gave me an apologetic look.
“It’s fine, Kev,” I muttered through gritted teeth, eyes narrowed through the tumult bleating around in my head.
When Kevin closed the door, the old man with his wool jacket and dumpy, beaten hat did his version of storming towards me, which took a full two minutes between his cane clopping the floors and weary bones cracking. When he finally reached what was left of my desk, he threw the purple sack down on top of it and barked, “Scammer!”
I stood there and glared at the sack.
I didn’t have time for this. “I said there was a chance the pills wouldn’t work, did I not?”
Fury at the truth sent his fist balling and pounding down on the already busted oak wood. “I was told you could fix me, not steal my hard earned money like you kids always do. You’re no better than the government!”
“I never charged you . . .” I said slowly, digging deep, deep inside of myself for patience.
He acted as if he hadn’t even heard me, perching his cane on the desk and fishing around in the back pocket of his slacks with those shaky, no doubt Parkison’s riddled hands. He came away with a worn-looking, black leather wallet, where he took his sweet time opening the flap and taking out two bills. “I’m a man of my word,” he said. “I was dumb enough to buy into your crap, so here, take the money, boy.”
“I don’t want your money, old man,” I said vehemently, wincing when the headache advanced to a migraine.
He held the bills out anyway. “Don’t you go trying to grow a conscious now that you were caught in the act.”
My teeth were chafing now, that migraine pounding harder. “It’s not an act. I’ve helped others with their problems.” Why was I feeding into my own lie? I hadn’t helped any of the others. A stupid placebo effect was the only thing in order.
But to be called a liar right to my face. To have my wrong-doing thrown at me so acerbically when I’d only played into this ridiculous, belligerent ordeal to help sorry people like this pathetic man in front of me—who was obviously miserable with his own life and relished taking it out on others. It was infuriating. No wonder there was a hole in his chest. That dark energy must have taken from him what he’d never shown to begin with: a heart.
“Well what am I supposed to do now?” he demanded.
I threw up my hands. Honestly, I couldn’t be bothered with whatever it was he decided to do. I had other things to worry about. Starting with how the very office we were standing in was in total shambles, my desk having been ruptured when I’d been flung against it. I should have been accepting those two hundred dollars he was offering, but I wouldn’t stoop that low. Never.
He didn’t lower his hands. Those dark, saggy eyes implored me to take it by whatever noble resolve fortified his person. “Just take the money. I took your pills that must’a cost you something.”
I laughed. “Look, do whatever. Go see a real doctor about your problems.”
He blinked. “What about them alternative treatment options you spoke about before?”
I laughed again. This time it ended on a razor note. “You going to continue to receive treatment from someone you called a con, a scammer?”
“I’m just askin’ you to give me the
real thing.”
“Well, I don’t have the real thing!” Whatever ability the twins had been convinced I’d had was obviously unattainable by my own will, choosing only to act whenever it felt like acting.
“Well go and find it,” the man commanded, spittle flying from his spot-covered lips.
I looked at him incredulously. What I saw in him was more than what the others had been taken with. There was desperation, yes, but he lacked the kind, warm desperation the others had. There was nothing but bitterness in this man. Entitlement. As if I owed him this favor when I didn’t owe him or anyone else anything.
For weeks I’d been stretching myself, trying to please all parties around, and what did I have to show for it? An unconscious woman upstairs, ungrateful woman in the kitchen, and my dad’s shop breaking apart.
I’d been stupidly intoxicated on the smiles and happiness this hoax of a business had brought before, but these people, every last one of them, they didn’t see me as a person, someone with problems of my own, they just saw me as a tool to patch up the hole in their lives.
Well, I didn’t need this. “Get out of my shop,” I said quietly.
“What?” the man said loudly.
“Get. Out. Of my shop!”
He looked at me dumbly for a moment, then fished around in his wallet some more. “No, no, son, I’m sure I got something more here if that’s what you want.” He came away with two more hundred dollar bills. “Here, take it. Just help fix me up. I got somewhere to be tomorrow. I can’t go there with this thing missing from my chest.”
“Leave!” I shouted so loudly the man jumped, his eyes widening in horror, but I didn’t care. I just wanted him gone. I wanted all of them gone. I wanted the calls to stop. I wanted the cases to stop. I wanted to go back to a time when everything around me made sense. When the world was gray, flushed in routine, recognizable patterns, deadened emotions, because I realized now that that was true happiness. No one expected anything from you because you were such a blemished, washed out color, their eyes just skimmed right over you.
That way, no one took advantage of you. No one set the caliber of expectation somewhere up there with Jupiter and no one put a red target on your head.
I knew my anger was irrational and misplaced. I knew I still ignorantly cared for those twins for some skewered, pathetic reason and I knew tomorrow, when the headache—hopefully—went away and I could think straight again, I would be right back to trying to hash out solutions on how to break into HB.
But as far helping these immortals and damaged men and women? I wasn’t the man for that. This current case had shown me as much. The hoax only went so far. The first two cases had been a coincident, bout of luck. This one was a spike of reality. If I had to be the bad guy to get that message across, so be it.
The old man had turned away and was heading for the door now, not another word falling from his mouth. I thought I saw him wipe his face, but I’d turned away at that point.
It wasn’t my problem. It wasn’t my job. I wasn’t a walking cure to the world’s problem.
I was just a man.
I was just Peter.
*****
I found his wallet that evening. The man must have dropped it in his haste to remove himself from the premise after my high-raised temper.
A temper I was still riding straight into a gulf of dizzy fatigue. The day was meddling out into evening, approaching closing time. I’d unplugged the phone line for a semblance of peace and it was only in searching for the cable that I’d tracked the gray cord to the black leather in front of my desk.
The wallet was old as dirt and showed. The thread binding was loose enough so that a lot of the contents had fallen out of it. I rethought my previous theory. He must have dropped it when he’d jumped at my tone, those hands that were already unsteady having entered a new territory of jittery.
I scooped up two credit cards, a welfare card, and what looked to be a small photograph, but the last item turned out to be a collection of photos. The flap unrolled in my grip, down into a column of pictures. The images started in black and white, then became monochrome by the fourth, then modern colorized film by the seventh.
The first was a picture of a man in what looked to be a vintage US Marine’s uniform with an insignia stitched into the breast. The photo was signed W.P.D in the left corner. Below that was the picture of an African American woman, smiling blindingly for the camera, her features captured in perfect beauty along the stream. They went on and on, a collage that strangely depicted a life that I could only assume was W.P.D’s.
W.P.D and his wife, four children.
Individual photos of the four children.
And finally, one last shot of them all together, much older.
I frowned, folded the photos back to their previous state and searched for a place to tuck them in the wallet but each pocket was painfully loose, unreliable. I settled for stashing it behind the man’s ID.
A wave of earlier’s dizziness had me slowly lowering myself to sit in front of the desk.
The ID read off Walsh Paul Douglas and the photo was of none other than the man who’d come into my shop. I glanced over the content of the ID until something else caught my eye. The birth date. In bold, fading letters: 11-18-1924. That was only three days away.
I looked back to all of the credit cards and the bills that’d been stuffed into the main pocket. He would probably be needing that money if his birthday was right around the corner.
And speaking of right around the corner . . .
His address was stationed right here in Wamego, only two blocks down from the shop’s corner lot.
I thought about seeing his face again after the way I’d yelled. Maybe I could leave the wallet in his mailbox or something. The idea was instantly shut down as I noted the rest of the address tag. An apartment.
I blew out a breath and that small gesture taxed me, had me swaying and seeing colors. Lethargy came into me bone-deep now.
Was this what happened when you didn’t sleep for what was bordering on two weeks? I’d grown so used to feeling nausea that the cool, curdling sizz of it in my throat brushed me like the tender fingers of a lover.
Deep breath, release.
The door opened.
Danny stood there in his work apron. He gave me one solid look over and said, “I’m going home now.”
I nodded, or at least I think I did. The boy’s face rocked in and out of my line of sight.
“Your sister picking you up again?” I asked in a voice that couldn’t have possibly reached the boy’s ears.
He nodded. “At the gas station down the street.”
I tried to look out the window to judge how much daylight remained. The sky was a twilight violet.
It was less than a quarter mile to the gas station; it was a quarter mile too much, but he’d told me before that his sister didn’t want to take up any customer parking spaces or so she parked at the gas station instead.
My awareness was fading fast, whirling down a vortex of flying colors and heavy-headedness. “Alright,” I said, unable to argue the matter.
Cold hands closed over mine.
I forced my droopy eyes open.
Danny was tugging me in a poor attempt to get me to stand. “You can’t sleep here, boss.”
I blinked once, twice, then nodded, pushing myself forward and up only when it became clear the kid wouldn’t leave otherwise. Once I was up—barely—he reached up and placed a hand on my back as if should I fall, I wouldn’t crush all four feet of him.
“Mom says overworking reduces the quality of productivity in the grand scheme of things,” he said as he opened the door and led me towards the stairs nestled in the back of the shop, out of the public eye.
“Your mom sure tells you a lot of stuff.”
There was no response to that and I felt the boy struggle to haul some of my weight as I gradually ascended each step. When we made it to the top, I was ready to collapse.
“Not here
,” he said, pulling harder towards the bedroom.
Once there, I could barely discern the bed from the floor until Danny threw the covers back and all but pushed me onto the plump, precious feel of memory foam and the fluffy sea of pillows. The room was gloomy with the rapidly descending evening light, dark films of blue giving the boy’s features a ghostly shade. He draped the blankets over me, tucking them under my body gently before stepping away.
I was half asleep when I murmured, “Why are you always so helpful?”
Those honeyed eyes, I could feel them on me as I drifted. “Because Mom says I should always respect and help the elderly.”
Inwardly I flinched and it had nothing to do with being branded elderly and everything to do with W.P.D.
Still, I whispered, “I’m only twenty-six.”
Receding the way he’d come, Danny whispered back, “And I’m eleven.”
Ch. 19
I woke to the sound of drilling and hammering, a cacophony of wretched noises. My circadian clock was all twisted. A groggy fog overcast me, and rather than leap up from the bed, I rolled over and tried to shove myself back into that black, dreamless sleep.
Until something muffled sounded against my chest. Followed by squirming. Lots of squirming.
“Peter,” the muffled voice spoke into my dissipating dream cloud.
I groaned.
“Peter, I can’t breathe!”
My eyes snapped open. I rolled over so fast I nearly fell out the bed.
Ophelia lay on the other half of the bed, her eyes wide and traumatized, her body practically flattened. Last night it’d completely slipped my mind that she was in the bed.
“Ophelia, I’m so sorry,” I said in a drowsy rush, squinting at the morning light—wait.
Morning light?
I scrambled from the bed over to the window, where I found the sun was on the wrong side of the sky. Horror knocked me back on the bed, where I snatched up the alarm clock and looked at the most petrifying, ghastly, mind-shattering thing.
4:34 PM.
I’d overslept. By a whole ten and a half hours!
