Avalon Expandable Heart: The Wild Heart Series

by Shantelle McKinnon

  “You have a crazy mind, who knew an ear would part an angry crowd?” I shake my head at her remembering the crowd suddenly turning from being on our side to hostile due to the betting situation.

  “Just imagine if I wore the zombie costume,” Avalon laments suddenly like she missed the most amazing chance in the world. “It would have been pandemonium.”

  “He’s always got the other one,” I tap her on the nose, loving her smile.

  She giggles. “Imagine the dentist’s face if Aho-big- mana wants to try and get a replacement tooth. He should just get a shark tooth and shove it in the hole. If Daryl saw him, he’d be convinced he’s a cannibal. He has this thing about certain meats being cooked certain ways and their effects on you if you consume something not properly cooked. Hold on, maybe that was what was wrong with him!”

  “Could be. Certain meats? Like he has talked about eating and cooking human flesh?” The conversation topics I now talk about.

  “He has talked about eating it,” I raise my eyebrows and she laughs again. I love that sound. “You know, because of the whole survival aspect of it. But I’m sure just biting it out of someone alive wouldn’t be on his approved list.”

  My eyes twist to find the gash in my shoulder. “Manky,” I agree with her.

  “Yes, it is boof. So, shut your eyes and get ready. I bought six bottles so hold your breath. This is gonna hurt.”

  My eyes again refuse to shut and they find hers. She meets my gaze, my whole body wants hers against it.

  She suddenly frowns and tilts her head to the side, causing one of her long plaits to sway. “Are you worried that I ... I don’t like you now or something?”

  My gaze focuses on her small feet encased in their moccasins. I’m not scared of that, not now because even though I realised Av sticks by people she likes, I never comprehended just how much she’s like that. I wonder what her limit would be, when she would save herself? What she would do for Harry, or D? Her family?

  I look up at her, waiting. Warm blue eyes assessing. I breathe out. “No, I’m not worried about that. Look at me, sugar. What more could a girl want.” I pull a crazy face and indicate the blood covering my torso like I’m a prize on a game show shelf. She scrunches her nose up before laughing. “It’s just that I’ve just realised that you’re the boof here. Not me.”

  Av unscrews the lid of the bottle of antiseptic making it into a very threatening act. “Nightmare and boof now too. So, he did scramble your brain. I wonder if pouring this in your ear would help that problem. Let’s seeeeee now...”

  “I’m not joking, Av.” I say pushing myself up to tower over her, anger biting at me. “Come on! You saw me! You can’t be seriously shrugging the whole thing off. You saw who I am. Saw what I’m capable of. Don’t make it like its nothing!”

  I don’t know what’s come over me. I want her like nothing else, but I’m terrified of what that means. I’m terrified of her leaving my life, but I’m so goddamn scared I’ll hurt her that I want her to walk away, so I never have to live with myself when I do.

  “Settle Petal.” She scoffs, aggravating my anger more with her dismissal. “I saw you, you’re an unreal fighter,” she swishes the bottle impatiently wanting me to turn to drench my torn up back.

  “That’s not what I mean,” I growl and even to me it sounds menacing. I’m agro. I’m agro I can’t get more tattoos. I’m agro that I might be going to jail and missing her... that it’s hard to stop thinking and acting selfishly.

  “Righto, then,” she tutts.

  I frown as she screws the top back on the bottle and pushes it into my hands. “Even though you have seen me do... errr stuff. Like you know, cutting off an ear or whatever. You still think you’re the heinous one. Have it your way. You won’t give up this crap until it’s done. It’s going to plague you until you know what it feels like. You need to meld those parts together. You deserve happiness, Noah. I hope you find it. I wish you all the best.”

  She lets out a deep breath then turns and just starts walking off. My heart thuds in my chest when she doesn’t turn back; doesn’t look around.

  You’re doing the right thing, she’ll only hurt you in the end...rip your heart out as easily as she breathes… or you’ll hurt her. My father’s voice croons in my pounding skull. Kill her, even…

  I start to tremble.

  When her form disappears into the darkness and appears further down the road, tiny, under a flickering streetlight, still walking, not looking back, I totally freak. I don’t want it, she’s right. I desperately need her in my life. But does she need me? It’s now or never. I could let her go now and know that I will never hurt her. Never turn on her if she touches me unexpectedly.

  The blurry image of my mother’s lifeless body strains against the prison walls I’ve caged it in. Avalon’s face replaces hers. I shudder and swallow hard. I can’t hurt her.

  I can’t.

  She’s turned the tables on me. I realise I’ve been worried about me hurting her more than her hurting me. I stand up to chase her down and my dad’s words pelt at me like sharp hailstones.

  Relentlessly.

  Each step I hear his voice, commanding me to stop. Telling me what women are. Telling me what my mother was.

  My feet move along the tar after her, but they feel like they weigh a ton, my father’s words constantly jarring against my skull but my feet keep moving, and finally, I realise I’m beating them. I’m beating the fear that he instilled in me about women, only just but I’m doing it. He was wrong. Not all females are like he said they were.

  An image of my mum appears again, and the pain lashes me. My body shakes with the internal pain that I never have let loose. Why, Dad? I struggle to contain it focusing on Avalon, forcing my legs to break into a run to find her.

  I can hear her before I see her, softly illuminated in a soft yellow of a solar light peeking out of a frog’s mouth near someone’s driveway. Her voice seems tired and faded. Very unlike her. Like a candle burning low.

  She’s nodding into the phone, her face serious beneath the war paint and blood splatter. Her eyes are closed. One arm is wrapped around her body like she’s holding herself up. Together.

  Avalon runs that hand over her face as she listens to whoever is talking on the phone. I sit next to her and can hear a male voice, low, deep and angry. Chastising. A growl slips through my thin lips.

  She turns to me and gives me a cheeky smile.

  “Ah!” She mouths. “Do I have your keys or something?”

  I send her a deadpan look. Smart arse.

  “Is everything alright?” I whisper, forgetting everything but the fleeting sadness that flashes in her eyes. And the cause of it. I eye the phone through narrowed slits.

  She nods once looking away, fingers picking at the grass next to her.

  I touch her on the shoulder and gesture for the phone, ready to let whoever have it. She shakes her head and mouths “Dad.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. For Henry, for... for everything.” Her voice is unlike anything I would ever expect to come out of her mouth, she sounds almost defeated. She sounds young. Vulnerable. Like she’s had enough.

  I pull her into my lap, wanting to protect her, happy that she doesn’t resist even though I’m bloody. Her soft hair smells like hay, horse, smoke and blood.

  The conversation goes on one-sided for a few more seconds before she hangs up.

  Before I can talk, she raises her eyebrow up at me, “Ah huh. Since I don’t have your keys, it seems you don’t want me to go after all mmm hmmm? So how about we just shut up about it. I see you, Noah Reed. I know something terrible happened to you. I know you carry a lot of crap around that someday you’ll talk to me about. It’s all good. I choose you.”

  I manoeuvre her to slide up one side of my shorts to reveal her bikini top tied around my thigh, slowly I untie it. I hold it in my hand, staring at it. I’m supposed to be strong, a tank of coldness and rage. But that little piece of fabric derails me in the most catastrop
hic ways.

  “My father murdered my mum and then killed himself. I found… them.” The words feel dry and brittle like they would break if someone made a movement in the air. I didn’t mean to say that. I meant to say something witty, to move away from this topic altogether. The topic that no one has ever been able to make me face... to talk about... to relive.

  I don’t know what to expect from her. Horror or pity maybe. Both unwelcome and I tense waiting, arm muscles quivering with the need to shove her away. Instead, I’m embraced. My arms switch modes and tighten around her. I feel supported. Warm tears sting my chest. She’s crying for me. Someone is crying for me. Not trying to get me to talk about it. Not trying to get me to tell them why. Not for the horror of it. Just crying for me.

  “My mum... he- he cut her heart out, Av. It was in his hand. He wanted to rip her heart out like she did to him. Her throat, her eyes...” It’s like someone else is talking. Someone else is babbling. It’s not me, it can’t be. To hear it out loud makes it real. Makes me feel everything I had never let out. Tears pour down my face as I let the scene explode in my head.

  Broken

  Noah

  Time’s passed, it must have, my eyes are bone dry. My little Indian girl hasn’t stopped holding me for even a second. It was what I needed, someone to just be there for me, not delve or scrape away at my crumbling defences. Holding me is enough. Walls are splintering inside and it feels overwhelming, everything rushing to escape now that it has the chance. The sensation of breaking down is not one I relish, that’s for sure.

  I press a hand against my throbbing forehead, massaging the bridge above my nose. I’m not breaking. How can you break something that is already broken?

  Her small hand weaves until it’s encased gently around my swollen fingers. So small in comparison to mine. I feel her looking up at me, still pressed against my body, holding me up and I know I shouldn’t feel worried at what her expression is like, but I do. I don’t want pity. I just want... acceptance... maybe. Reassurance, maybe. I’m not sure. I’m so stuffed up I don’t know what I need or what I want. Maybe someone else’s life.

  Tiny tugs on my hand cause me to open my gritty eye. One eye doesn’t open, can’t open. It feels like an egg is pushing against my eyeball. Her tears have eroded their journey through her war paint, her eyes though, are alive and warm. Her expression is no different from a day ago.

  “Carn, let’s get back to the bottles,” her smile isn’t soft or guarded like she’s treating me like I might break. “That sounds bad, doesn’t it? Like we’re gonna drown our sorrows. True dero’s.” That gives me enough strength to nod. I wish those bottles were bourbon.

  As we walk, I have trouble connecting to my body, almost as if I’ve betrayed it. I’ve become the internal weakness in its strength. Strength that has been worked to withhold every conceivable onslaught and built so precisely and so carefully that only something within it had the chance to bring it all down.

  And down it promises to come. I’m the traitor.

  It’s a hard thing thinking about my family let alone talking about them. The people that I loved and trusted as a kid. To say anything about them out loud feels wrong. It always has. That’s one reason I never talked.

  “My dad was in the military, he was stuffed up...” I mumble. Groping.

  “Bloody government,” Avalon growls.

  It’s not what I expected to hear and in such a vehement tone. It throws me for a second. “What?”

  “The government needs to step up and look after people that are in danger of mental trauma, no matter what, who or where they are. If people go to war or toil away to feed this country, they should be looked after. Mentally and physically. They shouldn’t be discarded. It shouldn’t be a taboo subject and they need people that understand too, with people that are actually empathic and experienced to the exact situation, not just someone with a degree certificate. People suffer and deal with it in... the only way their minds see fit or are capable of. I feel sad for your father and mother. I feel angry that no one helped you understand the pain. That you still hold it all.”

  I stop and stare at her. She feels for my parents?

  Faces of all the people that were ‘there to help’ me flash in my head. They only wanted to know what happened, pretended to care about me. They didn’t connect.

  It doesn’t matter, it was mine. My fault.

  “No one can take this pain away.” I gaze off toward my car in the distance. One of the things I thought gave my mind other avenues to meander down.

  “You’re right, no one can take pain away, they can only help you through it and find perspective in it. And not unless you let them and not unless you want to,” she taps me on the nose and tugs at my hand. “Lucky for you, I don’t really mind bashing through a few internally fortified, gun bearing, razor-wired barriers with a bazillion mines plopped in front of them to lend my awesome and amazing accurate perspective.”

  I allow myself to be pulled along, “You just described how I think of where I’ve got all this shit contained perfectly.”

  “Funny that,” her blue eyes narrow for a second and her mouth pulls down. She picks up a bottle and unscrews the top. “I’m here for you. I know it’s probably a ton to let out and that you may not want to let the dam free-flow right now. Just know that anytime you can talk to me, okay? I know it hurts right now, but it’ll get better.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I grumble.

  The pain inside is so gargantuan that there is no sting as she works the antiseptic into my wounds. Her movements are quick, light and deft and soon I just feel her hands on me. Really feel them.

  “Stop, Av,” I grunt, realising that a couple of single battle wins against my dad’s words hasn’t won the war as my body zeroes in on the feel if her hands. I’m a pendulum, so off balance, it’s disconcerting. This is why I hesitate because it’s all still there, worming in my gut. His words. The thought that no one kills someone like that for nothing. What if it’s true?

  “What?” she comes in front of me. “Am I being too rough?”

  I swallow wanting her hands back but also not. I shake my head. “Just tip the rest over me.”

  She crosses her arms defiantly. “No. Tell me why you have a thing with touching. One minute you’re touching me, the next I can be near you, the next I can’t. Spit it out, so I know what I’m dealing with. I can’t pretend you’re a horse for the rest of your life!”

  “You pretend I’m a horse?” I’m mystified why I’m surprised really, knowing her. Another visual pops into my mind. I swallow maybe that wouldn’t bad thing...

  She shrugs, “Pop says to go with what you’re good at.”

  “I wonder what I should liken you to then?” I smile crookedly at her. Still trying to let go of that image in my head.

  “Well let’s see, we have a choice of waves, cars, fighting, hating Seth, and drawing. I reckon...” she pauses for a second. “A haunted car.”

  “What?” I can’t help laughing, you never can tell with her. “A haunted car?”

  “Yeah like... Christine. I’ll be happy to drive down your alley anytime so don’t turn your baaaaackkkk.” she smiles evilly.

  “Least the car’s black, something my alley will accept.” I wink at her. Suddenly feeling okay, which, when I realise this, makes me then hurtle back down to misery. I roll my good eye to stare down at the tattoo of my mother. Words form and release themselves, “My father told me that I should never let females touch me, that they are only out to play with your heart and then crush it. That they are only after their wants and needs and will use as many men as they please to get them. That they don’t really love, they just use. I can’t stand touching because he said that’s the way they fool you, they get your body onside and then they own you. Use you. They can control you as you hunger for them. He made me promise him I wouldn’t let any girl touch me that way.”

  A minute ticks by.

  “What a load of bullshit! I wish your
dad were alive because I would march over to your house right now and kick him up the butt!” Avalon stamps her foot.

  “It’s not bullshit, Av! He’s dead because my mother had a fucking affair and did that to him,” I snarl back at her. “He was speaking from experience. She did all that to him. He bloody loved her, Av, and she did that to him!” I’m yelling now, my voice harsh. “He came back through everything to be with her and she did that!”

  Av watches me unperturbed by the violence in my voice.

  “And what did he do to her?”

  “Are you fucking joking?” I can practically see my anger coursing through my body obliterating the pain. It feels safe. I’m good with anger. It kills pain.

  “He killed her, we established that,” I know what I must look like as I glare at her.

  “Before that,” she crosses her arms, blue eyes defiant again ignoring the aggression that is radiating from my every pore.

  “What?” I stare at her. “I just said he loved her.”

  “And what was his ‘love’ like?” She uses her finger to add quotes around the word love. “What did it mean to be loved by him?” she waits as I falter.

  “He loved her! Isn’t that enough?” my breathing is ragged as I stare at her, wanting her to back down. Glad to evade my part in it all. My slip up in the whole thing. Menace drives me to step forward. She holds her ground.

  “Nope. Love comes in all shapes and forms, Noah and some of them aren’t peachy, and some would be called a whole of lot of other words in the dictionary. People do all sorts of things in the name of love,” she spits out, her fists clenching. “All sorts of deranged, hurtful things. So, I hate to tarnish your brush but just because someone says they love someone, doesn’t mean it was a good and lovely thing. Full of roses, walks on the beach and Pina Coladas. Uh uh. Love is more about actions than words. I know you were a little kid but tell me... tell me how he loved her,” she challenges me, blue eyes flashing and I’m torn between freaking out because I can’t remember and because I realise I’ve based everything on that. That he loved her. His words.