The message didn’t waste time on cordialities. The words chilled her with their familiarity, though she couldn’t understand why. Once again, she did not recognize the number.
WATCH YOURSELF, read the text. RETALIATION HAS CONSEQUENCES.
28 / Rage
“Do not go gentle
into that good night.”
–Dylan Thomas
Lexi had a staring contest with the bathroom mirror in her apartment. Her face snarled at her, taut and red. She snarled back.
No horns. No wings. Nothing but a drab and bitter human, dark-haired and pixie-faced, her blindfold of fear replaced by a blindfold of rage.
“Nothing?” she whispered. As if in answer, her hair frizzed as if from an electrical current. Lexi raised her hands and ran them through her hair.
Yes! There! Show me as the monstrosity I am. See me for who I truly am!
But her hands clutched only curls. She restrained herself from tearing them out by the handful. There—the pain. She lowered her hand and looked at the red bead glistening on her pricked fingertip. She sucked at the blood.
It was real enough.
Lexi reached up again. They were sharper than she expected. They looked as they always had in all those glimpses she’d had of them, tapering and curved like a gazelle’s. She reached back, feeling the weight on her back now, too. She glanced in the mirror and noted how they grew in parallel, the outstretched wings and the curving horns. Her fingers twisted around the budding feathers, yanking out pinions as other women yank white hairs. It would have terrified her had she not had her fill of terror already.
What the fuck am I?
Perhaps this was what happened when things got too real. The more you believed in these endowments, the more they solidified. You could feel your feathers; you could stab with your horns. No wonder the government was scared. No wonder politicians didn’t want people to discover their true nature. The world was brutal enough as it was. What would befall a city of angels? What power would fall to a district of devils? What if the Hydras were right? What if there were stones better left unturned?
Retaliation has consequences…
Lexi opened her hands and let the blood-tipped feathers drift to the floor. Warmth trickled down her back as her shoulders wept blood. It wouldn’t make a difference, she sensed. Whatever emerged from within her would only grow back.
The mirror mocked her and contained her. It illuminated her horns, her wings, her red Judas mouth—human elements, all of them, after all, however badly humans wanted to label them as “otherworldly” to disassociate themselves from their actions and their fates.
This is what it is to be human, Lexi realized. And it isn’t the bliss of the unknown that we humans deserve. It’s this ugly truth.
She didn’t register the pain, at first, as her fist punched the girl staring back at her, the girl she could not stand to look at. A dozen shards catapulted through the air and clattered to the floor. Lexi realized her mistake as the truth multiplied and surrounded her.
One tortured soul had haunted her from within the mirror. Now she faced more than a dozen Lexis, staring back at her from the floor.
Lexi shied from the darkness in their eyes. Retaliation has consequences, she tried to explain. That did not seem to appease them. Her thoughts only darkened their eyes further.
Everything has consequences, she admitted. It was no different than what is promised after retaliation. It was a classic damned-if-you-do / damned-if-you-don’t scenario. It was madness. Retaliation? Retaliation was all she had left.
She saw the change in the eyes of the girls who stared back at her. She watched as fury clouded their faces and tightened their mouths. And she felt all that she saw.
Rage swallowed remorse. Rage dropkicked self-pity. Rage murdered sorrow. And then, like blood-red wine tucked into the refrigerator, rage chilled to become cold, calculating anger. Anger was a creature that arrived on Lexi’s doorstep with a suitcase full of strategy and vengeance. It tipped its hat at her and hopped into her brain. It knocked on the Logic Department’s door. It found a broken mirror somewhere in the crevices between her hippocampus and her hypothalamus, and it was wondering if somebody had misplaced it. No retaliation? it scoffed. Think again, missy.
Someone had sent that text and had not sent another, knowing one would be enough to freak her out, knowing there was no way—and no help—for her to track an anonymous caller. She couldn’t fathom it being Dominic, though he’d known of her connection to the Tzami. He’d shunned her like roadkill and hadn’t thought twice of inciting a massacre. She couldn’t imagine it being Zach, either, or any of the seers from the Tzami; how could anyone turn against their freak-show family, against the only people who understood and supported them?
Then again, she had, hadn’t she?
Perhaps it was the work of the agencies, the same minions who had disposed of her parents so messily. It seemed that they not only knew of her ties to the Tzami—they also knew of her history. Someone knew her, and knew what she was capable of—or what she may have been capable of, with the right equipment and help and courage. Why even warn her? If they feared her—for whatever unfathomable reason—why not simply kill her? It wasn’t like they had a no-kill policy. And what could they possibly fear? That she would high-tail it to the demolished factory of her family, resurrect it, and single-handedly flood the world with a black market of mirrors?
Oh my God.
What a death wish.
What a ludicrous death wish.
What a ludicrous, perfect death wish.
. . .
The very afternoon, Lexi packed up her clothes, books, all the nonperishable edibles she had, and a newspaper-swathed bundle of her savings. She drove over to the accounting firm and secured a freelancing deal with her boss. He was keen on the idea; if she worked well from a distance, he promised, the company could set her up as an external contractor between the branched-out firms. She’d always be on the go. Lexi did her best to express enthusiasm, her mind already gone, knowing that if things went as planned on her end, she would never hand in another project and would be kicked off the team by the end of the week. She packed up her laptop, her fern, and her accounting binders into the red pickup.
Her next stop was Nova.
Dominic still worked shifts at the hospital. After an unrelated incidence of necrophilia, the coma patients were under 24/7 surveillance. Lexi’s mother, ironically, was the most safe-kept family member after all. Dominic may have back-stabbed Lexi, but perhaps he sensed that she would come at him with a chainsaw if he so much as breathed on her mother’s pillow. It was of some consolation, too, that her former roommate Becky worked as a nurse at Nova now, her all-nighter partying aptly traded for all-nighter shifts. Becky knew of her friend’s break-up and her fears. She kept a careful eye on Anastasia for Lexi’s sake and ensured everyone else in the ward did, too.
Lexi checked the clock on her phone and pulled onto Interstate 495. The highway stretched before her, gray and wide and lonely in its silent procession of cars. Yang drowsed in the seat beside her, his head nestled on a battered shoebox that hadn’t fit in the suitcase. Lexi took advantage of the traffic to call her grandfather.
Predictably, he didn’t pick up. She fumed for a moment. And, what? If one of us dies, the others will find out from the newspaper?
The traffic gave Lexi a chance to text him. She’d be catching a plane to attend a friend’s wedding out of state. She’d be gone all week and probably wouldn’t have great reception in the backwoods of the Midwest—not to mention the time zone difference would be a bitch. She would be careful. Hugs and kisses and all her love.
What was left of it anyway.
Lexi sent the text. The loneliness that remained in its wake solidified in her mouth like a bitter pill. It lodged on her tongue no matter how hard she tried to swallow. What a perfectly dysfunctional family we’ve become, she mused. But a family, somehow, still.
And it wouldn’t do to have
them look for her.
#OnceUponARebel
“They’ve promised that dreams can come true—
but forgot to mention that dreams are nightmares, too.”
–Oscar Wilde
The day after Lexi’s graduation had dawned strangely drab after a week of consecutive summery days, like a cough punctuating a soprano’s solo. Gray clouds sheathed the sky and swathed the gold nugget of the sun. Wildflowers furled their petals and hid their faces. When Pappou and Sophia drove back home in Pappou’s rugged Chevy, Lexi tucked herself and Yang into the old red pick-up that had once been her father’s. She headed to the local prison for the first time in over a year, unaware that it would be the last time she’d see her father for a very long time.
The sign-in, the waiting, the screening, the stark contrast from the humid stickiness of the outdoors. She remembered to keep Yang in the pick-up this time, as much to avoid rousing the rage of the prison mongrels as to avoid drawing attention to herself and her wolf, but she missed his companionship fiercely and his petulant whine echoed in her ears. She met the bleak eyes of the prison staff and followed them through the cold concrete labyrinth until she settled herself onto the hard plastic chair in front of the anti-reflective glass window and faced her father under stenciled letters spelling out Keep Hands Within View At All Times. They picked up their phones simultaneously.
“Dad,” she said, barely recognizing her voice.
It hurt to speak. It hurt to look.
Elias was half the weight he’d been when they’d taken him in, eleven seasons ago. His hair had thinned and his mustache was white. It wasn’t that he wasn’t fed or cared for; the guards had informed Pappou time and time again that Elias simply refused to eat most days. He did not participate in any communal activities with the other inmates, even with others who’d been imprisoned for non-violent acts of rebellion akin to his. He’d refused to speak since learning of Anastasia’s condition during Lexi’s last visit with Pappou a month after the Ruling.
He smiled and wept now to see his daughter, and raised his hand as if to touch her. His fingers stuck against the glass, splayed and frozen, blocked from their goal. She raised her hand and pressed it against the glass so that she mirrored the outline of his fingers.
“Dad, how are you?”
“I’m fine,” he said in a voice that rasped with disuse and loneliness. His eyes were as she remembered them, bright and brown as sunkissed acorns. “Did you finish school? Did you get your degree?”
It was such a quintessential question for a Greek father that Lexi could not contain the smile through her tears. “Yes,” she managed. “Accounting. I got my degree.” Her voice cracked. She did not tell him about the writing degree. She did not tell him about the art classes.
“Good.” He breathed out a long sigh and closed his eyes, tired with the effort of speaking, or perhaps envisioning all she did not dare to tell him.
“Pappou is sending Sophia to live with Yiayia Marina,” she blurted. “She’ll be safer with Yiayia and Mom’s sisters. She’ll be attending a really great school. Yiayia and the cousins are really looking forward to seeing her. But Pappou and I are staying.”
“It would be better that you left.”
Her heart dropped. Pappou and Dad pushed her away because they loved her, she knew. She didn’t want to go. She hated that circumstances forced them to try to force her away.
“I’m not leaving.”
“Get a job, then. Keep your head low. Accountants are the quiet church mice of society.”
“I am not a church mouse.”
“Don’t be an idiot. Church mice live longer than other mice. These are not days for artisans and dreamers.”
Anger needled through her. “There has never been a needier time for artisans and dreamers. If everyone gives up so easily, we’ll all be brainwashed by the end of the president’s term.”
Pain flitted across Elias’ face like a shadow, fleeting and ephemeral. “People must know when to stand down. Courage works in doses. Idiots get themselves deported. Or imprisoned. Or killed.” He shook his head emphatically. “Don’t be an idiot.”
An unfamiliar officer appeared in the doorway of the room that housed Elias and four other convicts conversing with their visitors. He wore a dark wine-red uniform that stood out like a drop of blood amidst the russet-brown color of the local prison staff.
Lexi frowned. “Who’s that?”
Her father glanced over his shoulder. His face hardened before he turned back to look at her. “You should leave. Go.” His eyes glowed with an intensity she did not remember ever seeing before. “Your time is up here. We’ll talk again soon. I love you, Lexi.”
She stared at her father. Their time wasn’t up.
“Elias?” the man called.
“Lexi, go,” her father commanded. He turned and looked at the man in the red uniform. The man strode forward and grabbed the collar of Elias’ orange jumpsuit. Elias’ face settled the phone calmly back into the receiver. His eyes commanded Lexi to do the same.
Get out, they said.
Lexi dropped the phone, rose from her seat, and pressed herself against the glass, shouting for her father. She pounded on the window with her fist until the young couple next to her dropped their phone and grabbed her. “Don’t,” the woman begged her. “Those are another jail’s colors,” the man added, a quiet murmur of reason. “They won’t kill him. Hush, or they’ll lock you up too. And what will you have managed then?”
Lexi did not know if she believed them. But she let them hold her hands to show the glaring prison staff that she was not a threat as she watched her father. There was nothing she could do on this side of the glass.
The man said something and hoisted Elias violently up from his seat. The surrounding inmates looked outraged, speaking and gesturing rudely at the red-suited officer, who shut them up with a curled-lip reply. The officer extracted a small pocket mirror from his pocket, lifted it for all to see, and dropped it to the floor. Lexi gasped. She did not hear the crack, but she saw the mirror fall. And she saw the officer’s leg gyrate as he crushed it under the heel of his shoe before he dragged her father away.
Lexi did not get the chance to remind him that she loved him, too.
29 / The Night Shift
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
–J.R.R. Tolkien
Night spilled around her as Lexi’s eyelids drooped. More than once she jerked awake, gasping, after a second of sleep. She gripped the steering wheel tightly. Windows of homes and office complexes left streaks of yellow in her peripheral vision as she sped past. Headlights glared and flickered from the opposite lane of the road, drivers warning Lexi to stay on her side, to stop veering the pick-up, to stay awake, to stop at red lights.
Lexi ignored them.
They did not understand that there were no signs on the freeway to help her as they helped them, no Ramp Exit sign navigating her with the words EXIT 3A: ANSWERS, ½ MILE. They did not understand that she talked to herself while she drove in order to set things straight just as much as to stay awake. They did not understand that the traffic lights were red with rage and not with warning. Brakes don’t work along the road to Hell.
There are only so many hours you can sleep in a stranded vehicle. Lexi rolled down the window and let the cold air rouse her as words from a recurring dream haunted her. There’s only so much time you can devote to a standstill. There are only so many times you can try to resurrect the dead.
She stopped at a 7-Eleven.
“Roads any better?” the woman behind the counter asked. She was middle-aged, her short black hair framing a lovely face. She looked Middle Eastern. Armenian, maybe, or Persian. Her head was tilted up to the tiny TV suspended in a corner of the shop ceiling. A newscaster smiled at the camera, crumbs of snow falling onto his head and shoulders.<
br />
“A bit.” Lexi’s eyes swept over the crowded counter. She picked up a pack of peppermint gum and set it next to the cup of coffee.
“They canceled school for tomorrow. I just saw the announcement. My kids will be thrilled.”
Lexi tried to smile. She remembered those days. Back when schools were closed for falling snow instead of falling bombs. Back when the headlines and obituaries did not include familiar names. “Do you have any Tylenol?”
The woman turned to study the bottles on the shelves that lined the wall to her left. “Sorry, honey. All out. But I’ve got Aspirin.”
Aspirin. Lexi’s mother and grandfather had always detested medicine; their drug of choice was olive oil. (“Olive oil!” Pappou would bellow as if auditioning for a commercial. “Lubricates your system!”) But Dad swore by Aspirin—Aspirin for stomach aches, for muscle pain, for mosquito bites, for broken hearts, for resurrecting the dead.
“Ok,” she said.
Her mind filled with the freak-show of broken bodies at the Tzami. Dominic’s voice echoed in her head: This is how to survive in this world. Don’t you want to survive?
“Do you believe in the afterlife?” Lexi asked.
The woman raised her eyebrows. She rang up the coffee, gum, and medicine. Her almond-shaped eyes studied Lexi. Lexi blinked back tiredly.
“No,” the woman replied. “Do you?”
“I’m not sure.” Lexi set her cash into the woman’s outstretched palm, feeling some comfort in this old-as-time transaction. “But I sometimes wish I was.”
“Too many times we’re stuck trying to revive the dead when we can’t even rouse the living.” The woman added a paperboard coffee sleeve around Lexi’s cup. “I think if we spent as much time worrying about the life prior to the afterlife, we would likely have no time to contemplate the latter. Heaven and Hell are right here, inside of us. We take them with us wherever we go.”
The Wake Up (The Seers Book 1) Page 14
