“Michael,” I whispered into the darkness. “Michael. Come back to me.”
I closed my eyes and his beautiful face appears behind my eyelids. His tanned skin, bright blue eyes, chestnut hair. He wasn’t much taller than me; we were often eye-to-eye. He said he loved that the most. As dark and foreboding as his music was, he released me from my boredom. A box I had built, and to which I now returned. It’s only been one month. I can’t listen to any of his songs anymore. I might never be able to again.
Dead. Like my lover and my heart.
***
“You don’t remember the Watchers?” asked Georgia. “Mom used to scare us with them when we were little so we’d behave at communion?”
“That old Fallen Angel tale?” I asked. My twin sister was visiting from Ponchatoula, Louisiana, my hometown – a place filled with swamps, voodoo, Catholicism, and catfish. “You came to visit me, not make me crazy. And you’re crazy too if you believe that old voodoo hoodoo.”
“I’m not saying the Watchers are coming to get you for not following the rules of The Blessed Mother. Even though they should.”
Georgia was always the obedient religious one. But she was also the last to be kissed, the last to be with a man, and I am certain the last to touch herself. I’d had almost enough of her self-righteousness in my life. “The Watchers exist only to make children obey the Church,” I blurted out. “And I’ve never been one to adhere to a religion that manipulates people through fear.”
“Angels,” said Georgia quietly, “Angels are not to be feared.”
“Angels? The Watchers are Fallen Angels. Rejected from a cruel God.”
“After this time passes,” Georgia’s eyes seemed to cast a dark glow, “you will see the error of your ways.” Georgia’s accent thickened and her head tilted awkwardly as she spoke, almost twisting too far. She walked jaggedly to the bathroom. She turned as she closed the door, staring at me with blank, almost yellow eyes. I could have sworn I saw her pull the blade of a knife from her purse.
“There is darkness and there is light,” hissed Georgia from behind the bathroom door. “And there are only two kinds of souls, the good and the evil.”
“What are you talking about Georgia?” I shivered. “You’re freaking me out.”
“You have always been on the wrong side. There is nothing I can do.”
“What is wrong with you, Georgia?”
“Your grave was dug before you were born, Venus.” She smiled in the doorway, the light from the sun radiated around her silhouette. “You were born bad.”
There is a moment in time for everyone, when you see yourself in a mirror and realize you are exactly who you should be. I glanced at the looking glass next to my galley kitchen. I leaned in and saw blood splattered on my face. Tiny red dots decorated my reflection. I touched the blood and smeared it into my skin, but my hand was clean. My sister laughed. For the first time in my life, I realized my sister hated me.
And so I knew. Everything, as I had always thought it to be, never really was.
***
“Don’t do that,” he said as walked down the front steps of the brownstone.
“Don’t do what?” I asked instinctively. “You again? What’s going on?” I looked at the passersby; everyone appeared to be normal. “Is everyone going to freeze in place soon? Because that really freaks me out,” I whispered up towards Isaac.
“Don’t hold your keys like that,” he instructed. “Anyone can grab them from you.”
“Why do you think you can tell me what to do?” I countered. I looked up at him. His tall body blocked the strong sun from blinding my eyes. Sparks flew in my brain and caused a rush of adrenaline that I felt down to my toenails. I didn’t expect it, not in the daytime, but I wanted and needed it. “Are you my new advisor?” I asked sarcastically.
He stood at least six inches taller than me, and I’m not short. Each beat of my heart pulsed in my neck as he stared down at me.
“My eyes are up here.” He looked into them. I see blood in his eyes. I saw blood dripping down a wall. Next I saw curtains blowing from an open window.
I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Silly visions, none of it is real.
“Ready for our date?” he asked.
“Date,” I reply in a flat tone. “Date? I’m on my way to work.”
“No, you are coming with me.” As soon as he finished speaking the world stopped. We walked through a maze of pedestrians, frozen in place on their way to work.
“How do you do that?” I snap with annoyance.
“It’s not me doing it. It’s you.” He leaned into my ear and whispered lightly.
As I look at him, I can’t remember who I am. He lowers his eyes to the ground and I reach to him. He takes my hand and I feel a vibration inching into my fingers and up my arm.
“Do you feel that?” he asked.
I say nothing to him. I don’t know whether I am mad, scared, or intrigued.
“I’m sorry.” He looked genuinely disturbed. He pushed me against the cold metal of the ATM machine. I tried to feel something other than this empty feeling, so I let him push me. Then I let him kiss me. He seemed so hungry with my mouth. His hand touched my face.
“What do you want from me?”
“It’s about your sister.”
“My sister hates me.”
“So you say.”
“Why are you bothering me?” I demand. But is he bothering me? My bag falls down my arm. “I am just trying to go work.”
“You are trying to hurt yourself.”
“Really.” My eyes roll. “I’m trying to get by.”
“Really,” he said, mocking my tone. “If you hurt yourself, you think you are protected from other’s hurting you.” He smoothed my hair away from my eyes. “But you aren’t.” His hair fell into his eyes, slivers of blue cut through the dark fringe of his hair.
“For someone who knows nothing about me, except in clubs and coffee shops, you think you’re pretty smart.”
“I know what you need. Michael is gone. But you are still here. Stop wishing yourself away. Hurting yourself won’t bring Michael back to you. Ever.”
He put my bag strap back on my shoulder and turned to leave. As soon as he turned the corner, the crowds of people walked, cell phones vibrated, and coffee was poured. My world spun on a very strange axis. How did he know about Michael?
***
Georgia greeted me at the door. Her hair was dry and coarse, sticking it all directions. The fireplace cackled behind her. Her teeth looked strange and her mouth was clenched as if she’d been gnashing at something all day. But it’s not her teeth that upset me the most. It’s that her eyes were silver with dilated pupils. Her skin looked damp and almost blue.
“Are you sick?” I asked. She retreated to the kitchen and cleaned the table. She dumped the dinner plates into the sink and scraped off the spaghetti from last night. Each scrape of the plate screeched like fingernails across a chalkboard.
“Please, stop it,” I said. “Just let them soak.”
I stared out the window above the sink into the dark woods. The moon was full and made the room glow with a cool shimmer.
“You brought this on yourself,” she hissed. “You had Michael, a nice man, for the first time in your life. Now you are back in the gutter, alone, just like before.”
“Shut up, Georgia. You know nothing about Michael. And I don’t think you really know me either.”
Go look in the mirror. The voice of an old woman, cracking and harsh from years of smoking, whispered to me. Go now and look. See your secret. She is not who you think. The answer is in front of you.
Georgia laughed and picked up a glass of wine. She smiled as she turned away from me. Her back was covered in blood.
“Georgia!” I yelled. “You’re bleeding.”
“Am I?” She looked over her shoulder with a snarl. “Am I, really Venus? Or is it you?”
“I am looking at you, Georgia.”
“Look at
your hands.” She walked to the guest room and shut the door. I looked at my fingers, red with dried blood. Flakes of blood coagulated under my fingernails.
Georgia normally stays close enough to me where I can at least see her but now she was fading from my eyes.
I stumbled backwards and felt a body behind me. It was Isaac.
“Stay strong,” he whispered in my ear. “Face her.”
I pulled away from him and grabbed a knife from the table. I raced to the elevator and rushed in, backing up as people ran out the slowly closing doors. The brass doors reflected my insanity back to me. My clothes were splattered with blood and my hand clasped the knife against my thigh, digging at it and making tiny cuts.
“Call the police!” I heard someone yell as the door closed, separating me from everyone else. Isaac rammed a metal rod, a yardstick into the crack and opened the elevator door, following me.
“I’m scared,” I whispered. “It’s as if I don’t live in the right world anymore. Nothing is right. Even the owls are not what they seem.”
“You make the world what you want it to be. We are the ones who hurt ourselves.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
“When man faces a loss, he can live in a backwards world. Or he can dig his way out.”
“Are you talking about Michael?”
“I’m talking about you. You need to let go.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re killing yourself. You’re killing yourself to be with a man that is gone. I am here to watch you live, not watch you die.”
***
My mobile vibrated in my pocket. My parents.
“Hello, dear!” My mother chirped happily.
“Mom,” I yelled into the phone. “Something is going on with Georgia. I can’t figure it out though.”
“Georgia?” my mom sounded incredulous. “I haven’t heard that name in a long time from you.”
“What do mean? She’s my sister, your daughter. I talk about her all the time.”
“Venus. She’s not real. You know that.” Click. She hung up.
***
I am five years old. My father drives with the windows down and cigarette ashes fly into the back seat, landing on my new dress. He waves his hand recklessly outside of the window, with a death’s grip on his cigarette. The Rolling Stones Tattoo You album blares into the air.
You wouldn’t think the music would still play after the accident, but it did. I sat in the backseat, locked in place by the seatbelt. My father was halfway ejected from the front window, his skin skewered back over whitened bones in his shoulders, glass stuck into his abdomen. His neck was twisted backwards and the whites of his eyes were completely red. His blood seeped through his shirt and made a puddle on the dashboard, mixing with dust and cigarette ash.
I heard a small knock on my window and saw only a small child’s fist. Then I saw the rest of her.
“Hi,” she says. “Let me in. It’s Georgia.” And I did. I let her in and we became inseparable, more than I could have ever imagined. “We’ll be together forever from now on.”
***
When I woke up again, it’s the afternoon and I’m wearing the same clothes that I’d worn the day before. I slept more than twelve hours but I don’t feel rested. How could I? I miss Michael. I wish I were dead. Nothing is new about that. The air around me felt crushing and I could taste the coldness in my life. The dark feeling of descent settled in my heart. I knew that I was near my end. I even hoped for it.
The memory of Michael hung on me like a heavy wet cloak. I tried to ignore it, but it dripped from me as I walked through my days. I want to be free.
The stairs to my apartment felt like they tilted and bent. The carpet moved under my feet. I ran back into my apartment, straight into the bathroom, hoping Georgia wasn’t there. It felt like fangs sunk into my skin as a humming fear rung in my ears.
“Let go of me,” I cried into the dark room. “Free me!” The mirror twisted and my reflection contorted back at me.
Eyes flashed behind me. They are my eyes!
“Georgia,” I gasped. She stood behind me. Her profile glowed in the moonlight shooting through the window. She rubbed her arms and neck with her bony hands, her fingers reached into my hair. “What do you want?”
“I want what you want. I want to end your misery. That’s why I’m here.”
“Don’t listen to her.” Isaac’s voice shouts from the other side of the door. “She has no power over you unless you let her.”
“Don’t listen to him,” she countered. “He’s a Watcher.”
“There is no such thing as a Watcher,” I said.
“There is no such thing as Georgia,” he said.
“What?” I ask. Tears stung my eyes. “She’s right here.” I looked at her and I looked at myself in the mirror. She wanted to help me end my pain. I wanted to let her.
“You are the only one here. Look. Look very hard.”
“What am I looking for?” I plead, biting my lip and flinching under his gaze.
Blind girl. There will be blood soon. You see me, because you are weak. Give yourself to me. I stared into her eyes and heard a cacophony of howling noises in the wind. I gasp. “It’s me or it’s you,” she hissed. She stared at me through the bluish light coming through the window. Smiling, her mouth was hungry and feral.
“She finds you when you are weak.”
“Michael…” I looked into Georgia’s eyes and I saw Michael. He was walking backwards, waving at me. His mouth moves but there is no sound. I am lost inside her eyes, trying to find him. But the more I fought, the smaller he became.
I fumbled for the light. Georgia is gone. I felt like I walked through a pane of shattering glass. Tiny cuts burned my skin.
“What now?” I asked him.
“The rest is up to you. It’s all in here.” He pointed to my temple and brushed my cheek with the outside of his palm.
“What about you?”
“I come to you with what you want, but I leave you with what you need.”
“Are you one of The Watchers?”
“A Fallen Angel?”
I nodded, tears falling from my eyes, dropping like mercury into his upturned hands.
“I am. I am here to keep you from falling further.”
“I can’t stop. I don’t know if I want to.”
“You can.” He looked at me and tilted his head. “Let go of Georgia, and she’ll be gone. She is nothing but a fire… a fire that starts by your own match.” His hands held my hips as he kissed me deeply, with such force I thought I would expire.
“Yes, Isaac, but stay.”
And in a gust of wind, he faded from view. I smiled and looked up to my balcony across the street. Georgia, dressed in white, sat on the patio, wringing her hands. The sun came out and the world began to move around me again. I looked again at Georgia, and she too faded away.
Between The Sheets (A Naughty Box Production Book 1) Page 22
