The Mark of Chaos

by Susan D. Kalior

  He edged me backwards into the bathroom. “Your attempt at blocking me is like putting a sheer scarf in front of you. I can see right through it.”

  “But if I practiced, I could block you, right? Like envisioning a lead wall around me or something?”

  “Get ready for our day,” he said, closing the door, sealing me inside the bathroom.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled briskly. I smelled bacon. I looked on the bathroom counter and saw a plate of rippled brown meat. I curled my nose up but ate it anyway, too hungry to refuse.

  I examined my neck in the mirror. There was a small bruise where he nipped me. Funny it didn’t really hurt. My lip was a little raw too, but nothing that wouldn’t heal quickly. In normal circumstances, one might view johnny as a wife beater, but these circumstances were not normal. And it seemed nothing about johnny or I was normal either.

  I perused the line of toiletries on the mantle above the counter. The only shower gel available was licorice scented. I grabbed it noticing my white pants folded neatly by the black pitcher of water.

  I let loose a quivering sigh. That was a very bad moment for me when he removed my pants.

  I heard johnny in my mind. Get into the shower.

  Could he see me? Or was he still reading my mind?

  I heard him speak in my mind again, You can do your thinking in the shower.

  Fine, I shouted back at him telepathically.

  I hopped in the shower, speculating what horror awaited me, briefly reviewing the last two days and the paintings that had reflected them. Painting #1-A horrified woman with demon faces around her. Was not that my remembrances of being tortured in the so-called past lives? Painting #2—A naked woman humiliated in a crowd. Is that not how I felt when giving my televised opinion about male strip bars?

  I dressed in johnny’s selection of new clothes, folded neatly on the bathroom counter. Every garment was jet black: lacy underwear, bra, socks, boots, jeans, and a long-sleeved black tee shirt. Now all I needed was a black pointy hat and a broom.

  I wanted to slip the dragon medallion under the black shirt, but it was too bulky. It still scared me, but scaring me more was the day ahead. I half wished that I were a witch if painting #3 were to describe the day’s events—a rape scene.

  I emerged from the bathroom. The phone on the black end table rang. Hmm. Why did johnny make it operable again?

  johnny answered the phone, then signaled to me. “For you, Jenséa.”

  I went to the phone and took the receiver from him. He strode across the room and leaned against the wall near the bathroom. His mock show of giving me privacy, I guess. He seemed the good johnny again, I mean the one who helps me come out of myself and to heal antiquated trauma.

  I slid the receiver under my hair to my ear. “Hello.”

  “Jenséa, it’s me, Randa.”

  Her happy voice felt good. It seemed a million years had gone by since I’d heard from her.

  “Hi,” I said, like a homesick girl.

  She said, “You will never believe this, but twelve of your paintings sold last night!”

  My eyes widened. “That’s incredible!”

  “Apparently, you were seen on television talking about male strip bars. Bravo for you! And great PR for us! I told you johnny would turn the tides.”

  “Randa,” I spoke softly, “that wasn’t the tide that needed turning.”

  “I know dear,” she said, “but johnny will help you. He can work magic you know.”

  I turned my back to johnny and whispered, “You know about his magic?”

  “What magic?” she asked.

  “Oh nothing,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at johnny, his orange eyes twinkling at me.

  I was a little dismayed that I couldn’t spill my guts to her on the phone.

  “Another thing,” Randa said, “a strange guy has been hanging around the gallery since last night. He is looking for you.”

  I furrowed my brows. “What does he look like?”

  “Large, at least six feet tall. Black curly hair, an overhanging forehead, and real deep set eyes, Neanderthal looking.”

  Cold horror. I wasn’t breathing. Her description shocked me.

  “Jenséa,” Randa said, “are you still there?”

  I blurted, “You didn’t tell him where I was did you?”

  “Of course not, I’m no Okie from Muskogee, Cookie. I had the security guard throw him out. Still, I thought you ought to know. Any idea who the creep is?”

  “No,” I said lying. I had never told her of the rapes. I’d never told anyone. “I have to go now.”

  “Well then,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll see you in a few days. johnny said it would be at least that long.”

  Before Randa’s phone call, I would have been relieved to hear johnny had some plan to release me, but now I didn’t care.

  Randa added, “And he said you had everything you needed, so keep in touch. I’ll cover for you at the gallery. Just feel better, all right?”

  “All right, Randa,” I said, hanging up, feeling empty.

  I was paralyzed, shallow breath taking me into the quiet lost place inside myself. Life was too much . . . too much. In my mind, I saw the man Randa had described, his Neanderthal face, his big hands, sausage fingers tearing open my shirt, pants pulled off me against my will, helpless horror, him in me, I’m nothing, I’m worthless. I hate him. I hate him, this guy, this invader, my rapist. I had not forgiven him with spiritual love. I just pretended I did—to survive, to not kill myself, to not just lay down and die.

  johnny appeared before me, hands warm on my shoulders. I never saw him coming. “It’s all right, Jenséa. It’s all right. Now you know why I kept you here, kept you away from him.”

  My whole world had peeled away, leaving only my rapist. It almost didn’t matter that he didn’t get me again—everything had all been resurrected, and he had me, nonetheless. I looked at johnny blankly, standing limp, slow motion blinking in a stupor, holding down the morning’s breakfast, holding back the dreadful images of my fate years ago. I spoke like a zombie. “He must have seen the telecast from the debate. I practically invited him to hurt me again.”

  “No,” johnny said, “Today is just the day the sleeping monster awakens. Today is just the day you will look it in the eye.”

  I spoke almost in a whisper, “I cannot go through the third painting. It is a rape scene you know.” I felt small. My head lowered with shame. “You know everything, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  I hugged my stomach, feeling victimized by the mere thought of that bastard even talking to Randa. It was as if his very presence had whacked my soul—hard. I couldn’t bear feeling that way one moment more, and there was only one way to end it. And that was to end me. Because I could never end him. And it wasn’t in me to ask johnny to kill someone for me, or live with myself if he did.

  johnny drew me against him. “You give up so easily.” He ran his hands up my neck underneath my hair, letting the silky strands lay over his fingers.

  I heard his heartbeat; I was relieved he had one. I needed to feel the human part of him. I needed his warmth to put me out of my misery. But no, nothing short of death would put me out of my misery. Maybe johnny would do me the honors?

  “No,” he said. Then he turned me in his arms, my back tight against his chest in a warm embrace. He held his open hand firmly over my stomach, and the other hand spread over my forehead.

  He exhaled slowly. “You are moving into me through a tunnel of soothing darkness, to a safe and secret room where no harm can come to you. You hear the dripping of water in a cavern pool. And you know this place is your sanctuary, and the dripping sound your salvation.”

  The me that was raped blended into a soothing, safe energy, and quite suddenly, I was not that me anymore. I was Jenséa, the painter, lover of love. I was—okay. johnny made me—okay. Sometimes he seemed more angel than fiend.

  johnny released me gently and then said, “Let’s
go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The park.”

  “But ‘you know what’ isn’t going to happen, right?”

  “No, Jenséa, it will not.” He took my hand and led me out the door into the moist gray air outside the tenement. Crossing Avenue D, we journeyed down East 6th St. Again, we passed another establishment squared off by policemen hearing mumbles from the crowd revealing that everyone had killed each other, and no one knew why. I was afraid to look at johnny, afraid to ask him if he was responsible. I wasn't ready for the answer. Anyway, surely he didn’t kill people. He probably just scared them, maybe scared them straight. The bar thing was a gang thing, that’s all—a gang thing. Just a gang thing.

  We reached the park, the same one we were at yesterday, when I talked to the crowd. And there we sat on a red brick round curtain wall surrounding a deep purple and white petunia bed. Waiting. Waiting. I tapped my foot impatiently. “What is our purpose here?”

  “Wait.” His stoical face seemed to mask a depth of knowledge and experience that was seldom shared. I wanted to know his secrets. I wanted to hear his stories. I wanted to know him.

  “Was it hard for you to be raised by demon worshipping Indians?”

  “No.”

  “Were you happy?”

  “What’s happy? There are many feelings I see on others in which I do not relate. My emotional range is limited.”

  “Limited to what?”

  “Mostly thrill, satisfaction, annoyance, wrath, and solemnity. I’ve known that feeling the most and for the longest time, almost from the beginning. But then . . . came you. And now I know a new feeling. Adoration.”

  My heart felt kind of ticklish, and I loved it. “Tell me more about you, johnny. I want to know.”

  A faraway look came into his eyes. He turned his face from me, gazing forward into the past. “When I was eighteen, I used to leave the forest and roam the red giant mounds in the mountain ranges of Chile. The steamy volcanoes soothed me. The heat did not affect me. My people thought I was their fire demon. Perhaps I was. But I didn’t feel connected to them, not really. I was a part of them, but not really one of them. We both hunted and ate animal and man. We both tortured and sacrificed the chosen to appease our need, though our needs were different. Because I survived their tortures and sacrificial attempts on my life, I became their leader, revered and feared. Living with them was not hard.”

  “You ate people?”

  “Most Alacalufes did, back then.”

  I wanted to say, but you don’t eat people now, right? But I was afraid he’d answer—now too.

  “You tortured people?”

  His eyes slid my way with a pregnant pause. “Yes.”

  I wanted to say, but you don’t torture them now, right? And because I feared he might, I didn’t want to take any chances so I went the other way, you know—fantasy. “You were brought up in a barbaric fashion. Perhaps that’s part of what a Tazmark is—a product of devilish raising.”

  He turned his head back to me. “No, Jenséa. I am what I am. Any kind of raising would not influence a Tazmark one way or the other. You cannot rationalize or pretend away the truth.”

  My face fell. “I know.”

  “The details of my life will only upset you. Ask no more.”

  “I want to understand you, not what you do really, but who you are.”

  “There is no difference.” He shook his head slightly. “I want you to know me too, but knowing too much, too fast—is not in your best interest, or mine.”

  “Just a little more history then, please?”

  He stared into me for several long moments. Then he lifted one foot on the planter, draping elbow over raised knee. “All right.”

  “When did you leave the Ala . . . Alaca—?”

  “Alacalufes. I became bored after a hundred years or so.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Castile, Spain.”

  “You sailed in a ship?”

  He raised a brow over shifty eyes, but did not answer.

  “Did you go to Spain to find your father?”

  “If I had found him, he would have killed me.”

  I couldn’t have heard him right. No father would kill his own child, at least not under normal circumstances.

  “I speak the truth.”

  I shook my head lightly. “Oh johnny. That’s so sad.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You have it wrong. I wanted to destroy him.”

  “Why?”

  “It is a Tazmark’s nature to kill its kin. Tazmarks are natural enemies. We live to fight. We love to fight. Our greatest pleasure is the challenge to kill each other, for no other kind can defeat us. We waive the challenge only to mate, or to let a Tazmarkian child grow up. Then, that Tazmark too, becomes fair game.”

  There it was, the kill word. But a fiend killing a fiend wasn’t the same as a fiend killing a human, was it? Still, how could God create such a being?

  He responded to my thought. “Maybe God didn’t create me.”

  I scowled. I needed johnny, so God had to have created him.

  johnny’s eyes twinkled. “If He did, perhaps He didn’t want too many of us around.”

  I felt a little sorry for him. I cocked my head and studied him. More. I wanted to know more. “So what happened when you got to Spain?”

  “This is when I joined the Satanic cult.”

  My mouth hung open.

  “You asked.”

  “Did you worship Satan?”

  “I told you before, Jenséa, the Satan you believe in doesn’t exist. The God you believe in doesn’t exist.”

  A female scream sounded in the distance at the edge of the park. I looked. A man dragged a girl into the trees.

  I sprang to my feet. “Oh johnny!” I shot across the lawn toward the crime as if I alone could stop it. I had to. I had to save that girl from what I had gone through. johnny ran past me. By the time I reached the scene, johnny was punching the guy’s face. The guy. My guy. My rapist.

  I was paralyzed for a moment. I wanted to stay that way, but the victimized girl was on her hands and knees, sobbing. Black tresses of hair stuck to her wet face. She seemed no more than thirteen. Her white shorts and top were streaked with grass stains.

  I wrapped my arm around her waist and helped her up, comforting her with my touch. Comforting—I was good at that. She was lanky and sweet, a little taller than me, sobbing from a seeming endless well of woe. My tears flowed with hers. I knew how she felt. I knew everything. It was one thing for that bastard to hurt me, but quite another to hurt an innocent child.

  Rage ignited in me as it probably should have when I was raped. But no, it took this to free my anger.

  I turned back to johnny. He straddled the downed man with a white knuckled fist drawn back. The rapist lay still, bloodied and panting with quiet eyes. I had trusted him once to love me. He’d raped that trust. Betrayal hurt the most, more than assault. More than forced entry. Betrayal’s shining edge was too blunt to cut smoothly and left blatant scars.

  I blurted hotly, “Punch him again, johnny . . . for me.” I turned away, not actually wanting to see the punch, however, I wouldn’t mind hearing him scream a little. Oh dear God, forgive me. I tightened my grip around the weeping girl’s back and guided her out of the trees, onto the field, away from the scene. I heard my rapist groan as johnny beat him. And his suffering stirred no mercy in me. True evil had touched me at last.

  We were almost back to the petunia bed when johnny caught up to us. I sighted the blood on his fingers and the satisfied look on his face. I didn’t care if the rapist was dead. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. But I knew for sure that johnny had hurt him—bad.

  I think he knew the bastard would be in the park. He was trying to show me that I could win, that I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. But I was. I was frightened by something worse. johnny may have killed someone, and the thought pleased me.

  I wiped the sweat off my face. “Shou
ld we call the police?”

  I saw johnny’s lips form F.

  I cut him off. “Don’t say it, not in front of her.”

  He silenced.

  My heart pounded a million miles a second and something opened in me. The anguish I’d bottled all those years since the rapes, flooded into a light source deep within me, blending, changing, and then transforming into a beautiful love. I flowed the love from my hand on the girl’s ribcage, into her. It would not take this girl years to heal. I would not let her suffer as I did. “I want to take her to the Rape Center. We can call her parents from there.”

  johnny nodded and led us to a taxi. See? He was good. Or so I told myself.

  When we entered the Rape Center, we briefed the lady at the front desk. The Casa Blanca fan overhead dried my moist skin. My arm was still wrapped around the girl’s back. I enjoyed being mother-like. I needed that somehow.

  The girl trembled violently. I had done that twice, long ago, yet, not long ago. Long ago was now. A woman appeared behind us and led the girl gently away. We were told to go to the end of the hall. We rounded the corner and began our journey. I was appalled by the number of wall-to-wall victims on sofas, in chairs, and in the rooms we passed.

  When we reached the end of the hall, a dark-skinned counselor with curly black hair, waved us into her tiny yellow office. Over her wood-chipped desk hung a picture of two women, one African American, the other Caucasian, facing each other with hands linked. I really liked that picture. The rest of the room begged for monetary donations. I would be that donor.

  We sat on vinyl-cushioned chairs and told the story—that is, the part we wanted her to know. But when the counselor insisted upon calling the police to make a report, johnny said it was time for us to go.

  He rose abruptly and pulled me along down the hall. The counselor stood in the doorway, staring. What could she do?

  I was embarrassed, leaving so quickly, fearing we’d appear guilty avoiding the police. See? I was good, right?

  johnny walked us down the shiny hall floor of black specked white tiles. I about had to run to keep his pace. Just ahead, a female counselor stood in the doorway of an office, seemingly waiting for someone. When we passed, her face lit. “You’re the woman on TV who talked about balancing the sexes. Way to go!”