The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza

by Rebecca Taylor

  Reflexivity, I looked down at my body, “No,” I shook my head.

  She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. “I could help you,” she nodded her head. “Help you to be strong—so long as you’re not here to trick me.” Her eyes grew wide with a sudden realization, “Did you bring food in here?” her voice rose. “Have you brought that filth into my sanctuary!” she screamed.

  I held my hands up before me and shook my head, “No…nothing. I swear.”

  “And your pockets?”

  I reached into my jeans and tuned the pockets inside out to show her. “Nothing.”

  Her shoulders dropped a few inches and her face returned to something close to serene. “Well, okay then.” She inspected her reflection, turning her head from side to side, jutting her chin then retracting it into a coy expression, “If you are going to stay in here with me, you will have to learn the rules.”

  “Stay?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she laid on her side and ran her hand over her sharp looking hip. “You couldn’t possibly want to live like that,” she pointed a bony finger at the curtains behind me.

  “Actually, I’d like to leave this place altogether.”

  On her back, she gazed up at the ceiling of mirrors above us, “You’d like to what?”

  “Leave,” I repeated. “I’d like to leave this place.”

  A confused expression wrinkled her brow. “Leave?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Leave this offense. Do you know how. I’m trying to save my little brother.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head like she was trying to shake away my words. “You make no sense.”

  “Don’t you want to leave here?”

  “Leave where?”

  “This place.”

  “And go out there?” her voice cracked in the way that told me she was going to scream again. “Never!”

  When the shrill echo subsided, I asked, “How long have you been here?”

  Her face grew dark, “I have always been here, where else would I ever be?”

  “You had a life. Before this, before The Between and getting trapped in this offense. You had a life before you—” my voice stopped.

  “Before I what?”

  I turned away from her, my mind spinning around the thought that had just occurred to me. “Before you died,” I whispered. She had died. The people in the other room had died as well. They were all trapped here and I suddenly knew why. I spun back and faced her and it was my turn to shout, “I know how you can leave here!”

  She recoiled at the sound of my voice and covered her ears. “You don’t have to shout!” she shouted back, but when I threw back the curtain her screams cut through the air like a razor. “Stop! Close the door!”

  I ignored her and headed straight for the nearest table filled with food. I scanned the table quickly until my eyes landed on a neat stack of clean white plates at the end of the table. The girl’s screams continued behind me. “The smell! The smell! The smell!” As I grabbed two plates, I could see that, in my hurry, I had left the curtain open. I felt bad, making her so upset—but it would only be for a moment because I knew how to save us both. Actually, I knew how to save every single person here.

  “Everyone!” I announced. “Everyone listen to me! I know how you can leave here! I know how we can all leave!”

  No one looked up. Transfixed by the piles of food everywhere, bloated hands continued to grab and shove food towards their faces. “Just stop. Wake up and stop. It’s too much and if you slow down, you’ll be able to leave here.” On each of the two plates, I places a couple slices of ham, a spoonful of potatoes, and a scoop of the green beans. I grabbed two rolls, and two brownies then shuffled past a pasty looking woman choking on something she had just tried to swallow. “Stop!” I said again as I grabbed silverware, napkins, and two cups I filled from the fountain flowing with water. “It’s only balance. That’s all you have to do is balance the food here.”

  I shoved the napkins and silverware into my back pockets and centered the two plates over the two cups so that I could carry it all back to the mirrored room. When I looked up to head back to the starving, emaciated girl in the room, I could see that everyone around the tables continued to grab and shove until they made themselves sick. “Stop!” I shouted at them, but no one was listening.

  “They can’t hear me.” I realized. The balloon of hope that had filled my chest began to deflate and left me wondering. The girl’s hysterical screams continued to echo out from her mirrored cage.

  I had to try.

  Walking up to the curtained entrance, I stepped over the threshold with the two plates filled with steaming food. One for me, one for her. The second she saw me, she recoiled, like a feral cat. Her eyes grew even wider, blacker, and the screams coming from her mouth stopped, the end of her last cry dying as it lost energy and faded into nothing.

  “I know how to save us,” I whispered. Gently, with careful steps, I started to walk towards her. “You just have to eat a little bit. Just enough for balance.”

  “You are here to trick me,” she proclaimed.

  “No,” I shook my head. “I’m trying to help you,” I pleaded.

  “You’re jealous. You’re trying to make me fat. You want me to look like those slobs.”

  I took another step closer—she pressed her back against the mirror behind her, turned her head away. “Get away from me!” she screamed.

  “You need to eat,” I said.

  “Get away from me!”

  “Please, just a little bit. Then we can both leave here.”

  “Never! You’ll never make me.”

  “You don’t have to be fat or starving!”

  She clenched her eyes shut and grabbed handfuls of hair on either side of her head. “I’m perfect! You hate me because I’m perfect!”

  I stopped, a deep sigh filled my lungs and left me. “I’m not,” I whispered to her. “I swear to you, I’m not jealous and you’re not perfect. You can leave this prison, but you have to eat a little.”

  Suddenly, her hands flew to her sides in a defiant rage. “You can’t control me! You can’t force me! I won’t, not ever, and you can’t make me! I know my mother sent you! This is just like her, using my friends against me!”

  She couldn’t hear me either. I bent down and placed the food for her on the floor in front of me. “I’ll leave this. In case you change your mind.” When I turned, her screams returned, shattering the air with their anguish.

  “TAKE IT! Don’t leave that,” she sobbed. “Don’t leave it here. The smell! I can’t stand the smell!”

  At the entrance, I closed the curtain behind me, her tortured sounds didn’t seem to even register with the people out here still filling themselves and getting sick. I closed my eyes, and lifted a piece of the sweet smelling ham to my lips. With small, careful bites, I ate the food on my plate until my stomach felt full. I took a drink of my water, arranged the silverware tidily on my plate, and placed my napkin on top.

  When I lifted my eyes, I saw the space before me open up and Ray standing, smiling, waiting for me to come out.

  I walked towards him with the girl’s tortured screams still raging on and filling my head.

  Chapter Ten

  Sloth

  I had done it. So why did I feel so defeated?

  Ray smiled at me, “That was more like it. Much faster than the first one. What did I tell you? I knew you could do better.”

  His confidence did nothing to lift my spirits. I stood in front of him and nodded, “Yes, I think I understand how it works now.”

  He tilted his head and bent his knees so he could look into my face, “You don’t seem pleased.”

  “I’m pleased,” I stood up straighter as if to prove it.

  He stared into my eyes for several moments until the intensity of him made me look away. “Oh,” he said with a knowing tone. A small smirk pulled at his lips.

  “What?”

  He shook his head, “You’re disa
ppointed that you couldn’t save them.”

  I didn’t bother arguing with him. He was right. “They wouldn’t listen to me. Not a single one…not even her.” I looked up into his eyes. “The others, I mean, I suppose I understand. They never once acknowledged my existence. I don’t think they knew I was even there. But she was talking with me, looking at me. I wanted to help her.”

  Ray stared up into the sky, a deep breath filled his chest and I could hear the air rush out of him. “You can’t help anyone here. In here, a person can only help themselves.”

  “But you’re helping me.”

  He leveled his eyes at me. His expression was flat, “Not really.”

  “And I’m helping Daniel, or at least I will help him as soon as we reach The Great Balancer.”

  He held my gaze a second longer then turned and began walking down the path again. “We need to get moving,” he called and pointed a finger at the sky. When I looked up, I could see that the moon had moved noticeably since the last time I’d looked. Ahead of me, Ray kept walking and his quick stride forced me to jog to catch up. He hadn’t responded to my statement about helping Daniel—but I didn’t know why.

  “How many more offenses until we reach The Balancer?”

  “One.”

  Surprised, I stopped walking, “One?”

  “That’s what I said—one.”

  “Wait, and then that’s it? One more offense and then I can go to her and help explain what happened to Daniel?”

  “Yes.”

  I started walking again, turning this all over in my head. Something didn’t seem right and I remembered Ray had promised to tell me more about all that I still didn’t know.

  “Ray?” the tone of my voice made him stop and turn around to face me. “Before, in the forest before the gate, you said The Balancer gets to keep the energy of the souls who get trapped here. Why does she want it?”

  For a moment, Ray just starred into my eyes not saying anything and I got the impression that he wished I hadn’t asked. “I can’t say for sure,” he finally said.

  “But you have an idea. I know you do.”

  He nodded his head. “Yes, I have an idea.” He sighed deeply and looked around us, past the trees crowding the path, deep into the dark of the woods that seemed to swallow us more and more with every step we took. It was like he was worried we might be overheard. “I think,” he continued, his voice was low so I moved closer to hear him better. “I think she is trying to escape.”

  “Escape?” The thought that these creatures had somewhere else to go was somewhat stunning. “To where?”

  “Back into the world,” he breathed.

  “What…you mean my world? The living world?” I pointed in what I thought was the general direction of the way we had come.

  Ray nodded his head.

  “But how?”

  Ray reached into his shirt and began pulling out a golden chain until his hand wrapped around something suspended from bright links. When he opened his fist before me, I could see he held a gold key. “I think she is trying to make herself one of these.”

  “What is it for?”

  “The gate we came though, the gate that leads to the human world. All guides have one, it is how we pass from here to there. It is how we are able to leave here and watch over our souls.”

  I pulled my eyes from the key and looked into his eyes. “You watch us?”

  Ray nodded his head. “We watch over your whole life. We move freely from here to there…but she can not.”

  He started walking again and I followed. “Why can’t she?”

  “Because being The Balancer is her penance to bear. Her only path to absolution for actions she took when she was alive.”

  “What did she do?”

  Ray shook his head, “I don’t know. Some greater sin than the offenses can correct. But I can’t remember a time when she hasn’t been The Great Balancer, she has been here longer than my memory can stretch. I think now, after all this time, she is doing things, things that aren’t right—trying to get out. I think—”

  A noise in the trees startled us both and made the skin across my back crawl. Ray grabbed my hands and pulled me behind him while he peered into the darkness. Silent, still, we both stared into that dark space, watching for movements other than the silent faints that always drifted through the trees in the distance.

  When nothing did stir, and the sound didn’t happen again, Ray’s shoulders slowly dropped back into place and he released my hand. “I think she has been trapping guides inside her castle,” his voice was a whisper. “There are far more souls lost inside the offenses than there have ever been. I think this is why your brother has been wandering The Between for so long without his guide. I think she took his guide away. She would especially want to have your brother.”

  The archway to the next offense was only a hundred feet away. “Why especially Daniel?” I asked.

  Ray didn’t look at me, he kept his eyes on the ground. “Daniel was…is, very special.”

  I thought about the picture in my bag, I thought about Daniel’s smile. I had only been four years old when he died and didn’t really have any clear memories of my brother.

  Except for— “What do you mean?” I asked. “Special how?”

  Ray glanced at me with a questioning look and then returned his eyes to path before us. “What do you remember about your brother?”

  I thought about the question—what did I remember about Daniel? “I remember the way my mother would look at him. The way she would stand over his crib and watch him sleep.” I also remembered the feeling I had, like a weight pulling at my heart, watching her from the doorway of his room. His room—across the hall from hers.

  Ray continued to stare ahead of us. “Souls are all different,” he finally said. “Each one is unique. Most souls don’t last in the The Between as long as Daniel has. Most souls would have burned out years ago and already become a faint. Daniel is special because his soul is older, he’s passed through many more lives, learned many more lessons than most souls. Because of that…well I guess you could say his soul burns brighter than others, it’s harder to extinguish. In the physical world, souls like Daniel often do amazing things. They posses a power, like a magnet, that naturally draws other people to them. Sometimes their saints, or heroes—iconic figures with the strength to command culture, history, the shape of a nation. I think, had he lived, Daniel would have become one of those people. People like that posses a tremendous amount of energy.”

  “That’s why she wants him.”

  “Yes. With Daniel, The Balancer wouldn’t have to keep collecting, she wouldn’t have to keep waiting. She would probably have all the energy she needs to finish making her key.”

  We had reached the next offense.

  Again beneath a stone archway, I stood beside Ray and watched the souls inside. They hardly moved. Some laid on couches, some sat frozen before illuminated screens that showed nothing but flashing white lights, others slept.

  All around them were activities waiting to be taken on.

  “I got this one,” I said and moved to step into the offense.

  Ray grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “Wait.”

  When I turned to face him, he took a step closer. The nearness of him made me hold my breath. “There’s something else I want to tell you.”

  The heat from his hand felt like a fire spreading up my arm to my face. “What?” my voice shook.

  He hesitated. I watched the knot on his throat move up and down as he swallowed. “I—” his eyes darted over my shoulder and the color in his face drained out.

  “What,” I turned and saw what looked like the trailing edge of a shadow disappear behind a thick cluster of trees. My heart raced and sent a surge of adrenaline pumping through my veins, I moved closer to Ray, “What was that?”

  His arms wrapped around me as we both stared into the darkness. “Nothing,” he said, but his eyes remained fixed on the place in the forest where the shad
ow had disappeared. “It’s nothing.” He relaxed his arms around me and I stepped away, once again self conscious of this strange intimacy with him. My arm still tingled where his hand had held it.

  “What were you going to tell me?”

  He shook his head, “No, nothing. It was nothing.” He nodded towards the offense, “You better get going.”

  It wasn’t nothing. Whatever he had seen in the forest had frightened him and made him not tell me—that much I did know. “That’s a lie,” I said. “When I come out, I want you to tell me—everything. You’re keeping something from me and if it’s something to do with me or Daniel, I deserve to know.”

  He nodded his head, but his eyes scanned the forest.

  Inside the offense, it was impossible to not at least try and save some of them. Even though Ray told me I couldn’t help save anyone—anyone except Daniel I reminded him—I still yelled out to some of them. While I washed a sink full of dishes, I explained to the man staring at the screen that if he would get up and dry, it would probably be his ticket out of here.

  He never even blinked.

  I picked up a basketball and tried to get a few of the kids to shoot hoops with me, but their eyes were glazed with a thick white void. When I looked closer, I could see that their bodies were actually growing into their surroundings—anchoring them into permanent spots while what little life energy they had left drained away from them.

  By the time I finished folding a basket of laundry, the space before me opened up and I saw Ray again waiting for me to return to him. I glanced at the people around me, “Just get up, do something…anything at all.” No one moved. I waited a second longer, hoped for some sign of life.

  “Carmen,” Ray held out his hand to me. “Come out…they can’t hear you.”

  I sighed, stepped through the portal, and took Ray’s hand.