Paternus

by Dyrk Ashton

  He takes another deep breath. “I think I just didn’t want to, you know, get too hot and heavy when I’m leaving Monday night for the conference. I’ll be gone for a week. And honestly, I didn’t say anything before because I’m not sure how you feel about me... other than for, you know...”

  This just keeps getting better. Now he thinks I’m a slut!

  Zeke hushes another pending protest from her with a gesture of his hand. “And, I’m a coward, alright? I admit it. But you’ve got this wall up—and I get it, I do. It’s a self-preservation thing. Not letting anyone get too close.”

  You’ve got that right!

  “I do it too, but I’m trying not to. I don’t want to be that way anymore, be that guy anymore. We’ve both lost people we love and we don’t want to get hurt like that ever again.”

  All the while he steps closer, his voice genuine, soft brown eyes sincere—but Fi’s so incredibly nervous and worked up all she can think about is his breath’s going to smell like vomit and, God help her, she’s going to laugh, an uncontrollable, crazy person’s laugh—wait—did he say “love?” Her insides turn oily and cold.

  Zeke marshals on, “This is totally insane, what I’m about to say, but... Fi?”

  She’s begun to shake.

  “Are you alright?”

  Her eyes roll back in her head and she goes limp.

  Zeke lunges and catches her gracelessly, jamming one knee painfully into the sidewalk just before her head hits the ground. “Fi!”

  She’s quaking all over and unconscious—obviously having a seizure—but Zeke has absolutely no idea what to do. If she suffers from some sort of condition, she never told him about it. Should he put a spoon in her mouth? They don’t do that anymore, moron! And it’s not like he just happens to have a spoon in his back pocket! Call 911! Run and get her uncle! Scream for help!

  Then he feels hot steaming breath on the side of his face, accompanied by a deep rumble in his ear. The hair prickles on the back of his neck. Mol.

  Zeke turns very slowly, tries to keep his voice calm and even. “Mol?... Good dog?”

  The monster hound is only inches away, glaring at him, unblinking, pensive even. Gazing into those clear brown eyes, a bizarre thought pops into Zeke’s head—this is no ordinary dog. Then he imagines powerful jaws snapping closed on his face, fangs stabbing his skin, crunching into his skull, and Mol shaking him like a rag doll until his neck snaps.

  But the tension sags from Mol’s big hairy face. He heaves a heavy dog’s sigh, looks to Fi, and whimpers.

  * * *

  Fi has no sense of Zeke’s trembling arms holding her tight, or the spasms that wrack her body. All is calm and darkness. And she dreams. A dream that she’s an old man dreaming...

  Soft light on open water, pulsing, alive. It flares brightly—

  An infant floats on his back, sputtering, giggling, rocking on a broad ocean of reddish waves. Naked, chubby and pink, sky blue eyes beaming. His baby face, round tummy and little pee-pee bob on the surface while his pudgy hands splish-splash in the water.

  The baby gurgles, spits, blinks at the full moon, impossibly close, looming in a break between storm clouds that throb with heat lightning, pink, purple and green. Soft sultry rainfall tickles his face. His eyes are stormy gray. He coos at fireworks blasted aloft by a nearby volcano, ahhs at the hiss and steam of flaming orange lava flowing into the sea. His eyes are golden brown.

  Shooting stars whiz through the hazy atmosphere, red, blue, and yellow. One keeps coming, hurtling hot and fast. It strikes, sending a plume of vaporous sea-water shooting into the air. A torrent, a rushing wave, and the baby tumbles into the red depths. Then he’s paddling upward, emerald green eyes wide open. He pops to the surface, burbles water, and shrieks with delight...

  * * *

  “Fi! Oh God! Fi, please!”

  Warmth and wetness on her cheeks, up her nose, in her ear, across her lips. Slimy wetness and dog breath. The vague memory of a dream, slipping away. Then it’s gone.

  Her eyes flutter open.

  “Oh my God! Fi, are you okay?!”

  A fuzzy image of someone hovering over her, then Zeke snaps into sharp focus. Night air. Moonlight. Mol.

  “Shit!” she cries. She shoves Mol and Zeke away and scrambles to her feet. “Oh no! No-no-no!”

  “Are you alright?!”

  She frantically wipes dog slobber with her sleeve. She already knows the answer and is mortified, but she has to ask, “Did I have a seizure?!”

  “Yes!” he shouts, then steadies himself for her sake. “Yes, you did.”

  Fi breathes deliberately, trying to alleviate the humiliation, stave off the panic. It doesn’t work. “I have to go.” She spins and hurries toward the house. Mol trots after her.

  Zeke stands there, stunned. “Fi!”

  She makes herself stop and face him. “I’m fine!” He starts toward her, opens his mouth to speak, but she holds up a hand to cut him off. “Zeke! Please!”

  Her voice is so desperate and pleading that Zeke stays where he is, stricken but resigned.

  Fi can’t bear to see him look at her that way. She knows it’s little consolation but offers anyway, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” then turns away.

  Her mind’s a maelstrom, whirling at hurricane speed. On top of everything else, a seizure?! She’d cry if she could, but she never cries. Not since her mother died.

  This is not how Zeke imagined this evening going at all—but he knows Fi has to feel the same way. Even worse. He watches her approach the back of the house, her head hanging low, then sighs deeply and begins the lonely walk home.

  Fi curses as she stumbles up the sinking crooked steps to the screened in lattice porch, then realizes—at least Edgar didn’t come outside. This old house has thick walls, and Fi’s convinced that her uncle is a little hard of hearing, even though he won’t admit it. She can be thankful for that.

  The screen door creaks at her pull and the impression she’s being watched returns with a sudden tingling chill up her spine, so ominous it halts her in her tracks. She quickly surveys the back yard. Nothing there. The place where Zeke stood is empty, but he wouldn’t make her feel this way. Humiliated, remorseful, yeah, but not scared. And Mol’s right here. She has absolutely nothing to fear. Nothing rational.

  You’re crazy, that’s all, she tells herself, only half joking. Her attention is drawn once again to the gleaming full moon. It gazes back at her like a blind but omniscient cosmic eye.

  * * *

  Upon entering the outdated but sizable kitchen, Mol heads further into the house and Fi recognizes the tantalizing aroma of Beef Bourguignon. Edgar prepared her favorite dinner. Having missed it adds further regret and guilt to the tumult of emotions she’s experiencing already.

  Behind what looks like a closet door next to the pantry is a narrow set of what once functioned as servant’s stairs that lead up to the hall outside her bedroom on the second floor. She’s used them to sneak in and out of the house before, but she can’t bring herself to do it when she knows her uncle’s waiting up.

  She passes into the open stairwell, sees candlelight and the warm glow of the fireplace through the open double-wide living room doorway just down the hall. Good old Uncle Edgar, predictable as always. Last chance. She can head straight upstairs right now. Instead, she straightens herself, shoves a rebellious lock of hair back over her ear and enters the living room.

  Edgar is on the couch, scratching Mol behind the ears, an open Bible in his lap. In Latin, this time.

  “I’m home, Uncle,” she announces meekly.

  Edgar looks up as if just realizing she’s there, his impassive narrow face framed by bushy gray sideburns that travel down to his deeply cleft chin. The firelight glints in his flint-colored eyes. “Miss Fiona,” he greets her with his polite English accent. He presses a thumb and forefinger into his eyes, squeezes the curved bridge of his proud hooked nose with long calloused fingers, then tucks a stained silk ribbon he uses as a bookmar
k into the crease of the Bible.

  “Sorry Uncle. I...”

  He stands, tightening the sash of his wool tartan robe (his “sleep coat”), which half-conceals striped pajama pants. “Are you well?” he asks, as if she hasn’t spoken.

  She won’t tell him about her night with Zeke, absolutely not. And as for the seizure—that can wait. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  He pauses only a moment before responding. “Excellent.” He steps to the hearth and closes the folding glass doors. Edgar would probably be about 5’ 10”, but his shoulders are hunched and he walks with a stoop, which makes him appear shorter. His hair is mostly silver, streaked with black, pulled back and knotted in a tight braid that goes to the middle of his back. Fi asked him once why he had long hair. He said it was the “in thing” when he was coming into his prime, which she took to be the 1960s or 70s, when the style was more fashionable.

  Fi’s eyes lift to her uncle’s heirlooms mounted above the fireplace, thick with dust. An antique medieval shield with a smeared red cross, the color degraded to rust, over a background of cracked white paint. Hanging down behind it is a long two-handed broadsword in a tarnished steel sheath. He says they’ve been in his family for centuries. They remind her of him. Old, outdated, inflexible.

  He retrieves a brass candle holder from the arm of the sofa, pinches out the flame of another perched on a stand. “Good night, then,” he says, and shuffles around her in his worn fur-lined moccasins, keeping a personal space of at least three feet between them like he always does. He stops at the doorway. “There’s a bit of beef in the cooler, if you’re feeling peckish.”

  “Thank you,” she calls over her shoulder. Cooler.

  Mol gives her a lingering look then follows her uncle. Standing alone in the flickering firelight, Fi listens to them ascend the creaking staircase.

  He never hugs her, her Uncle Edgar. In fact, he never touches her at all, not since he insisted she take over the task of raking the tangles from her own wildly unmanageable red hair when she turned 13. Luckily the curls have relaxed as she’s grown and her hair now has only a slight wave.

  She shrugs her backpack, hugs it to her chest, and stares into the fire.

  * * *

  Moonlight beams through paisley lace curtains, projecting dappled patterns across the otherwise unlit room. Tucked tight in her antique brass bed, Fi dreams that she’s an old man dreaming. A soft pulsing light and a baby boy, floating on an ocean of reddish waves.

  Remember this time, she commands herself with that part of her mind that’s still her own, remember...

  * * *

  In a tiny room, sterile white, a withered old man gasps awake on a hard twin bed, wide-eyed and bewildered. A simple thought sparks in the darkness, struggles for space amongst the brambles and fog that infest his addled brain, forcing a tiny gap in which to breathe. I don’t dream! He clutches at thin sheets and stiff foam pillow. The thought trips over itself, I don’t dream, stumbles, I don’t... and falls, I... The old man’s sky blue eyes swirl to golden brown, then stormy gray, and emerald green, then fade, becoming dull, colorless, vapid. Brambles close in and the smothering fog of dementia billows, once again pervading every corner of his mind.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kabir

  Sixty miles north of Toledo, the full moon is a smudge in the murky Detroit sky. Tinted beams of searchlight wave at it lazily from the rooftop of a sold out concert hall. The heavy thump—thump of the bass can be felt for a quarter mile around.

  Inside the auditorium, Kabir stands with his arms crossed near the roped off hall that leads backstage. Six feet two inches tall with a thick mane of gray hair combed straight back and sideburns speckled black, Kabir is built like a linebacker in spite of his age, all shoulders, pecs, and biceps tucked into a finely tailored gray Armani suit, with a silk heliotrope tie.

  Kabir is a bodyguard. It’s what he does. Always has. They call him a legend in the business of rock & roll security, despite his best efforts to keep a low profile. In the thirty-six years he’s been doing this, no one he’s been assigned to has ever been touched.

  Thirty-six years, already? A blink, really, but in practical terms, plenty long enough. He’ll miss it when he moves on. The music, the noise, the crowds.

  Over his shoulder, the half-naked teen pop diva under his care for the evening prances on stage in glitter and lights, belting out one of her latest chart-toppers. It’s her last song of the main set and people with backstage passes are already lining up along the wall. The crowd roars as she builds to the song’s climax, something about brushing your teeth with whiskey, threesomes, and other youthful naughtiness.

  Kabir isn’t listening to the words. He’s busy doing what he does best. Being vigilant. Protecting. He surveys the mass of ecstatic fans with sharp copper eyes that seem to x-ray rather than simply see. Searching for signs of malice, seeking out bad intent, looking for trouble.

  And here it comes.

  “Hey, that’s Stag Larsen!” one of the bouncers from behind the rope near Kabir shouts above the pounding music.

  Kabir’s seen him already. How could he not? 6’ 5” tall, 290 lbs., wearing a two-sizes-too-small t-shirt tugged over his thick sculpted chest and a satin jacket thrown over one shoulder, Stag is Detroit’s latest and greatest hope for a mixed martial arts heavyweight title. He high fives fans, winks at girls despite the gorgeous swimsuit model draped on one arm and grins back at his entourage. The crowd parts before him like a shoal of herring in the path of a shark.

  “Did you see Stag fight Dinky Suarez last night?” Kabir hears the bouncer continue, speaking to another security guard next to him. “Stag’s better, but Dinky got fucked on that call...”

  Kabir’s already moving. He smelled the other man before he saw him. Being able to pluck the stink of rage out of the air and pinpoint its source, even in a sweat-filled, beer-soaked, disinfectant layered auditorium full of people—well, for Kabir, it’s a gift. Dinky Suarez, who lost to Stag in the cage just last night, is stalking through the crowd. All 340 lbs. of him. Sweat glistens on his tattooed face and there’s murder in his eyes. Dinky’s an inch shorter than Stag but a big heavy bastard. A lot of it’s fat, but he can dish out some serious punishment, and take it too. They say he hits like a wrecking ball.

  This isn’t Kabir’s purview. He’s personal security, not a bouncer, but innocent people, not to mention Kabir’s fellow security personnel, could get hurt. He’s acting on instinct. The instinct to shelter, shield, defend.

  The singer finishes her song in high crescendo. Unaware of the impending brawl, she heads backstage, throwing kisses to an audience that screams for more.

  Dinky reaches Stag well before Kabir does. “Hey Larsen, you faggot!” A couple members of Stag’s entourage, two smaller and less established fighters themselves, happen to be in the way. Dinky takes them out with a single punch each. Each one falling topples three of the crowd. People scream and jump back, pressing the surrounding mob into a tightly packed ring. Stag shoves his jacket at his girlfriend, pushes her out of the way and starts bouncing on the balls of his feet, fists raised, a twisted smile on his craggy face.

  “Punk ass bitch!” Dinky taunts, “no ref to save you now!”

  “Bring it, pussy!” Stag shouts, and Dinky brings it all right—long black hair, denim biker vest, skull tattoos on swinging fists, and wrath. They go at it hard, blow after blow sounding like baseball bats on sides of beef.

  The crowd is thick in a circle around them, and Kabir won’t just toss people out of the way. “Excuse me folks,” he growls, “pardon me.”

  Three good-sized bouncers break through before Kabir. Two leap on Dinky, the third grabs Stag from behind.

  Bad idea, guys, Kabir thinks. And he’s right.

  Dinky jerks away, throws a jab and a round house and the bouncers who jumped him are both out cold before they hit the floor. Stag ducks out of his man’s grasp, lifts him by arm and groin and sends him flying into a couple of Dinky’s biker buddie
s who’ve shown up at just the wrong time. They take down another half dozen bystanders.

  Kabir’s going to have to hit these guys hard. Not so hard as to do permanent damage, but enough to get their attention. Show them they’re not really at the top of the food chain. Not quite.

  Stag and Dinky square off again but Kabir breaks through and pushes them apart.

  Stag bellows, “Outta the way old man!”

  “Take it easy, fellas.” Kabir doesn’t shout, but his deep crunchy voice is easily heard over the racket of those in the crowd who haven’t noticed the fight and are chanting for an encore. “We don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

  “Stupid fucker!” Dinky dips, rolls his shoulders and delivers a perfectly executed uppercut to Kabir’s heavy square jaw, giving him all he’s got. And what he’s got is a lot.

  Onlookers wince and groan as they see and hear the punch land.

  Kabir doesn’t budge.

  Dinky’s eyes go wide. His hand goes numb.

  Kabir turns his copper eyes upon him and aims a quick jab at his ribs. Dinky’s whole fatbody quivers. He drops to his knees like a slaughtered bull.

  Stag grabs Kabir’s shoulder. “Hey, fucker!”

  Nice vocabulary these guys have. Kabir spins and open-hand slaps Stag right across the face.

  The crowd gasps. Stag’s ears ring. He sees stars. His legs noodle. He’s never been hit so hard, so fast. He takes a sharp blow to the solar plexus and his breath rushes out. He goes to his knees. Kabir turns his attention back to Dinky.

  “No no!” Dinky shouts, clutching his injured hand to his chest and holding up the other in an attempt to fend off Kabir. Kabir snatches his outstretched hand, twists, and Dinky flops to his back.

  The onlookers can’t believe what they’re seeing. Kabir, crouched between the two men, holding them close in a huddle as if the three of them are best friends having an intimate conversation.

  What they aren’t close enough to discern is the agony in Stag’s eyes, the veins popping beneath the ’roid rash on his forehead, the chords of muscle standing out from his neck, the back of which Kabir has in a grip so tight Stag doesn’t dare move due to the icy pain and popping sounds of his vertebrae. The crowd can’t smell the full weight of Stag’s tangy cheesy B.O., or that Dinky reeks of a massive over-application of Axe cologne. They also can’t see Dinky’s hand turning purple, the tears in his eyes from Kabir wrenching his wrist to the brink of snapping, or hear Kabir’s softly spoken question, “We done?”