And this time would be different.
No. No. No. The statue almost burned in her hand, the heat reaching her through the worn fabric. Jane clutched it close, stumbled over a collection of Barbie dolls missing parts and hair and fell hard in a crumpled heap of garbage. Something broke under her knee, wetness staining her pants, the reek of rotting citrus filling her nostrils. Jane reached out with her free hand for support as she struggled to rise.
Felt the pile beside her shift.
Slide.
Fall.
She purchased the six bowling balls only two days before, stacking them on top of the old bookshelf she filled with baby clothes and the comic-book collection she meant to catalog. The shelf was weaker than she thought, gave way as her grasping fingers used it to steady her.
And it all came tumbling down.
Jane landed on her belly, the first ball crushing the small of her back and severing her spinal cord just before the pain came. The second, an instant after the first, took out her right arm, at the elbow, bone powdering under the twenty pounds of falling resin. But Jane barely registered it.
Not when the third struck her in the back of the head.
Darkness closing in, Jane’s eyes locked on the mermaid, sitting pretty and perfect, upright, looking down at her.
Smiling again.
Annie broke through the front door a week later. A kind young officer comforted her as the firemen pulled the body out of the front hall, after first unloading a dumpster full of garbage in order to reach Jane’s decaying body.
“It’s my fault,” she sobbed on his blue shoulder. “I should have tried harder.”
Annie had to force herself to enter the house after the funeral, but it needed to be done and there was no one else. She rescued the sweet mermaid statuette from the floor before one of the crew could trample it, stuffing it in a bag. Jane loved that statuette. It was the least Annie could do to save it.
The cleansing of the house took four full days, leaving behind a home that would never smell fresh again. Still, the For Sale sign swung at the end of the driveway the day Annie had the yard sale. Most of what Jane brought into the house was garbage, but some of it could be salvaged and Annie wasn’t beyond making a little money on the whole thing, considering how much Jane’s death and debt already cost her.
A young woman with a sad expression stood back, hands clutching her purse. Annie watched her with the shrewd attention of a true saleswoman, noticing where the woman focused. The mermaid statuette sat, shining and lovely, front and center and the buyer couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off it.
“Only ten dollars,” Annie said.
The woman smiled, hesitated. “Will you take five?”
“Seven.” Annie slid the mermaid into a plastic bag, but the woman shook her head and stepped forward, hands sliding around it as she lifted it and met Annie’s eyes.
“Sold.”
The mermaid smiled.
***
Patti Larsen is an award-winning young adult writer with a passion for the paranormal. Now with multiple series in happy publication, she lives on beautiful Prince Edward Island, Canada, with her very patient husband and five massive cats.
Find Patti at about.me/pattilarsen.
***
THE TOWER
After the Fall
By Jordan L. Hawk
The medals tumbled from my hand into the trashcan, glinting with silver, bronze, and gold on their way down. One by one, they hit the bottom with a loud clang, to nestle amidst shards of broken glass and frame, and crumpled paper.
There. The last of it. Gone.
Maybe now the nightmares would end.
The doorbell rang, its cheery tone jarring. I turned from the trashcan in what had been a home office, but was now just another room to collect dust and unwanted memories. Too fast: my leg trembled, and only my cane kept me from hitting the floor.
I hesitated at the door. What would happen if I pretended I wasn’t there?
And I wasn’t, not really. W.D. McConnel died months ago. Nothing remained but a ghost, still clinging to flesh.
They’d ship me back to psych, though. Where doctors would prod and pry, nurses watching to make sure I swallowed the mountain of pills. They’d ask questions and try to slide their feelers into my brain, just like Hayden had—
I opened the door.
A man stood on the other side, his hand raised to knock. Honey-brown hair, drawn back in a ponytail, a long nose. Eyes blue as the sea off the Arabian Peninsula, clear and calm.
Gorgeous.
“Raphael Jones, with AJ Home Care Services,” he said, tapping the little badge clipped to his t-shirt. A canister vacuum hung on his back, and he wore a belt with dusters and spray bottles clipped to it. “They told you I was coming?”
“Yes.” Had his bosses given him my name, or just my address? I watched his face, but as far as I could tell, he thought I was just another soldier. Someone who’d protected others, but now couldn’t even take care of himself.
That was bad enough.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Sorry.” I stepped back, leaning on the cane. “I’m Darin,” I added, and held out my right hand from the force of long habit. It twitched spasmodically, and I hastily let it drop again.
“Call me Raph,” he replied. His glance at my hand acknowledged the twitching, but his gaze didn’t linger. I couldn’t decide if that was better or worse than pretending he hadn’t seen at all.
What was he thinking? What was I supposed to do? Make small talk? Get out of his way so he could get the job done?
I would have known, once upon a time, his emotions as easy to hear as a radio broadcast.
Gone now. All gone, just like the medals.
Embarrassed, I turned to hobble back into the living room. “I’ll just let you get to work,” I mumbled.
“Sure, but if you have a minute, I’d like to make sure the work order is right. Sometimes the lines get crossed, so I always like to check.”
“Oh.” I stopped and looked back at him. “I see.”
His smile warmed his features and made me ache in places I thought had died along with everything else. “The work order says minor maintenance and janitorial duties: dusting, vacuuming, emptying the trash, and cleaning the bathroom. Is that right?”
I fixed my gaze on his sneakers. Acid chewed a hole in my gut, and my face burned. I wanted to tell him no, it was all a mistake. Leave, get out. I don’t need you. I can empty my own fucking trash.
My hand spasmed, and the right side of my face twitched.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Great.” His smile looked sincere, but I was sure if I could just hear his thoughts, it would be a different story. Pity, maybe. Or a healthy man’s contempt for a broken one. “I’ll get started, then.”
I retreated to the living room and sat in the recliner where I spent most of every day. The curtains were drawn tight, but I heard the tap of rain against the glass of the windows. I didn’t bother turning on the light, and the TV remote had an inch of dust on it.
Sound told the story of Raph’s progress through the apartment: the tread of his shoes, the clank of trashcans, the whirr of the vacuum cleaner. My nerves twitched at every sound, insisting there couldn’t really be someone else here, because I couldn’t sense the tapestry of thought and emotion, which made up a living being.
I closed my eyes and tightened my hand on the cane, fingernails scraping the wood, like a man clinging to a ledge. Like I’d clung to Hayden’s hands when he heaved me up from the ground, just before he—
“Holy shit!”
The exclamation jerked me half out of the chair, old reflexes screaming. Raph stuck his head in the door, a bright grin on his face. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m supposed to stay professional, but I just saw your Parking Lot Mastodon CDs. And the poster!”
“Signed by the whole band,” I said. That had been a night. The lead singer had given me a “special performance
” back at their hotel. “You’re a fan?”
“Hell, yeah!” Raph leaned against the doorframe, his eyes alight. “So what did you think about the Ice Age album?”
***
“I don’t know why we have to do this,” I said. “Can’t you just call me on the phone?”
Anita Wannamaker stood in my living room, observing everything with a critical eye: the closed drapes, the dusty TV, the picked-at remains of a crappy frozen dinner. My “case handler,” they called her. It sounded better than “person who has to make sure you haven’t hung yourself from the shower curtain.”
“When was the last time you left the apartment?” she asked, ignoring my question.
I shrugged, cane tapping as I limped after her. “I go out.”
“Other than to physical therapy?”
My face spasmed. It had been bad today, maybe because I’d dreaded her arrival all week. “People stare.”
“People are jerks,” she said succinctly. “I don’t give a damn about them. I’m asking about you. Sitting alone in your apartment without human contact isn’t healthy.”
What the hell did she expect me to do? Act like nothing had happened? Act like I still had some kind of future? Like my brain hadn’t burned out, like I hadn’t come down in a shower of glass and blood—
“I have plenty of contact,” I said. “Raph comes by twice a week.” And I dreamed about him more often than that.
“Raph?”
Damn it. “The home care guy.”
She arched a single, skeptical brow at me. “And you have long conversations, I take it?”
I couldn’t turn away fast enough to hide the heat in my face. Because we did have long conversations. About music, at first. Then sports. Our hometowns. The foods we liked to eat. Nothing serious, nothing that really meant anything.
“Interesting,” Anita said, folding her arms over her chest as she studied me.
“He’s just running up the clock.”
“These services get paid by the job, not the hour.”
My stupid heart lurched, a second of euphoria, like when you jump off something high and get that instant of free-fall, before gravity takes over.
Before the crunch of breaking bone when you hit the ground.
“Oh,” I said.
Anita sighed. “Get out of the apartment. I mean it, William. Don’t make me file a bad report on you.”
“What are they going to do? I was honorably discharged.”
“No one ever really leaves Psy Squad,” she said, and headed for the door.
***
“So, um…”
Raph shut off the vacuum and turned to face me, an expectant smile on his face. God, he was gorgeous. A year ago, I would have known instantly if he was interested.
Ha. As if.
“Yes?” he prompted, when I didn’t say anything more.
This was stupid. “You probably know the Parking Lot Mastodons are playing at the amphitheater Friday.”
“Yes,” he said. Was there something hopeful in his voice? Or was I reading too much into it?
“Well, um, I’ve got tickets, and I was wondering if you…I mean, you probably already have tickets, and plans, and—”
“Darin?”
“Yes?”
He leaned a hip against my disused desk, his smile taking on a dimension that might have been flirtatious, or might have been my imagination, because how the hell could I tell? “I’d love to go with you.”
Oh. Oh, hell. I hadn’t thought about what to do if he said yes. “Great,” I managed.
“Dinner first? At the Indian place near the university?”
He remembered I liked Indian food? “Okay,” I forced past the constriction in my throat, which was mostly panic but maybe something else as well.
His smile broadened. “I’ll pick you up around seven, then.”
***
We pulled up in front of the amphitheater. Thanks to me, we could park in the handicapped accessible areas, rather than having to walk a half-mile from the nearest empty lot. “Here we are,” Raph said, putting the car in park.
“Yeah,” I said. And I found myself smiling. The right side of my face spasmed, but he wouldn’t be able to see it from the driver’s side.
People had stared during dinner, but I thought at least half of them were too busy ogling him to even notice me. Maybe all of them.
We’d laughed over the meal, and he’d fed me bites of his navratan korma. He was even sweeter and funnier away from the apartment. God, it felt like a date, a real date.
Like I was a real person, and not just the shadow of a dead man.
It wasn’t too bad in the parking lot, with people still drifting in, or hanging out waiting for friends. Not too bad in the line, either, until we got to the security guard wanding everyone.
“You on something?” he asked, scowling at my twitching face.
“N-no.” Heat suffused my cheeks; people were definitely staring at me now. Raph, who had made it through already, stopped to listen, which made it even worse. I didn’t want to remind him.
“Oh yeah?” The guard’s glare turned contemptuous. “Then why is your hand shaking? Too long since your last fix?”
“Back off.” It took me a minute to recognize the angry snarl as Raph’s.
“Hey! You want to be thrown out with him?” The guarded demanded.
“It’s okay,” I mumbled at the ground. Shame suffused me; I’d never backed down from a fight in my life, and now here I was taking shit from some overpaid rent-a-cop. “I’ll wait in the car.”
“Like hell.” Raph’s eyes flashed fire as he glared at the guard. “Do you know who this is? This is Major William Darin McConnel. You know, one of the guys who helped take down Hayden? The terrorist? So show some fucking respect.”
The breath in my lungs turned to glass.
The guard’s eyes widened, and he looked past the twitch and recognized the face of a ghost. “Oh shit! I’m so sorry, sir, I…”
He said more, but I couldn’t hear anything over echoes of Raph’s voice. Each word fell like a shard of broken glass, fracturing tinier and tinier as it hit the floor. Major. William. Darin. McConnel.
He’d known. He’d always known.
I was an idiot.
I turned and ran, as best I could with the cane, but no one can outrun the truth.
“Darin!” Raph shouted from behind me, but there was no Darin. There was nothing, just an empty shell, a space where William McConnel had been. And I hoped, I really thought—
What? That the dead would come back to life? That I would?
I limped blindly past the car, past everything, people stepping hastily aside as the madman came through, as if I might drag them down with me. The landscaped grass stretched before me, down a slope, and I tried to flee, but my leg betrayed me,
and
I
fell.
I fell down the stairs in a shower of glass and blood.
I fell down the slope, my cane tumbling free from my hand.
And I hit the ground.
I thought I’d died that day, when Hayden burned out my talent and threw me aside like a piece of trash. But I hadn’t, not really. Despite the pain, despite everything, I’d been in free-fall all this time.
“Darin!” Raph dropped to his knees beside me, and I struggled to shove him away. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong? Tell me?”
“You knew. You never said—I didn’t think—”
His arms, strong and warm, wrapped around me. “I don’t understand. Of course I recognized your name. You’re a hero.”
I choked on a laugh, because it was all a lie. Icarus’s wings had melted, even though the sun had burned down to something dark and cold. “I’m not him,” I whispered. “Or I was, but he’s dead, and there’s nothing left but this. This wreck.”
Raph’s scent, of coconut aftershave and warm skin, enveloped me as he leaned closer. “You stopped a terrorist. You saved lives.”
I shoo
k my head, my body a gaping wound, pumping out darkness. “I should have waited for backup. But I thought I could handle him. A lone telepath…how could he have any chance against me? So I charged in, and he…and he…”
“Burned you out,” Raph said quietly.
Hot fingers in my brain, accompanied by laughter. I’d tried to fight back, used everything I had, and if the whole squad had been there, he wouldn’t have had a chance.
But they weren’t, so I was the one who had no chance, vessels rupturing in my brain as he overloaded the psychic centers. Then, when I lay bleeding from my eyes and nose and ears, unable to stand, he picked me up and threw me through the glass dividing the penthouse from the stairs to the lower level. I’d lost consciousness halfway down. I had really never hit the ground until now.
“Yes,” I said. The stark truth. “And now there’s nothing left.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Without Psy Squad, without my abilities, what do I have?”
Raph’s fingers touched my jaw, gently turning me to face him. “Your sense of humor?” he suggested. “Your passion for music? Your concern for others? Maybe I asked for the assignment because I wanted to meet William McConnel, hero, but I’m here tonight because I want to spend time with Darin.”
He leaned in and very carefully, very gently, kissed me.
A part of me didn’t want to believe it could be true. I wanted to shove him away, and go back to my apartment where the drapes were always shut, because that was familiar. I could deal with it, with just waiting for death to get around to stopping by for a visit.
Instead, I kissed him back.
“You still have so much to offer,” he whispered against my lips, once the kiss ended. “And if you can’t see it right now, can you at least trust me enough to believe I do?”
I swallowed thickly. I felt drained, as if I’d been fighting gravity for months, and finally given in to rest on the solid earth. “I’ll try.”
“Thank you.” Raph hesitated then dug in his pocket, pulling out something shiny. One of the medals I’d thrown away.
“I saved them from the trash, just in case you changed your mind,” he said, ducking his head with a blush. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No.” I could always tell him to toss them later. But maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe someday I could look at them again and see them as a part of my past, not a death knell to my future.
Allegories of the Tarot Page 17
