A finger probed deeper. I was a thing, just a thing, a thing.
Without thought or warning, the hidden well of my life’s tears exploded in a tsunami of pain. I screamed, out of control, over and over again. “j . . . o . . . h . . . n . . . n . . . y!” I was lost in my screams. Nothing seemed real. The crimson monster had consumed me, and I was digesting in its flaming belly, lost to the world, lost to myself, lost in the awful, awful red.
Chapter Ten
The sound of choking seeped into the red, and the monsters flaming belly opened. The men fell away from me, gasping for air. I sat up feeling buoyant and disoriented, heaving with choppy breath and shrill whimpers. Through blinking strobe and red light, I saw my three attackers rolling around on stage and floor unable to breathe. Then beyond them, I saw johnny, standing . . . watching the choking men. His untucked shirt and tousled hair reflected the fight he’d had with the Zandron. He looked so quiet, so stoical and completely engaged in the men’s suffering.
How had he gotten inside? The door was locked. Could he walk through walls? Was he making these men choke? Of course he was. Of course.
Was this all a part of my fourth painting? Was I now to watch these three men die? As much as I despised them, I could not endorse murder.
I staggered off the stage, trembling hard. “johnny,” my voice rasped, “they’ve been punished enough. Let’s just get out of here.”
johnny glanced at me. Even from across the room, his orange eyes told me that they must die.
And from across the room, I conveyed to him with my angel eyes that they must not.
He sighed heavily, and the men stopped choking. The lights went off and clear light filled the bar. The music stopped. He made his way over to me, his eyes fixated on mine. My pounding heart hurt my chest, awaiting his arrival. His form grew more life-size and more real as he neared. His every step exuded power, my johnny.
He arrived in front of me and pulled me against him gently, swallowing my trembling body in his arms. Security washed over
me. My arms crept around his waist; I squeezed hard. My lifeline. My Tazmark. My johnny.
I heard feet approaching. The men were coming toward us. I stiffened.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. He released his hold on me and turned to them.
I stayed behind johnny, pretending to be invisible. My hands rested on his back. His power calmed me.
I heard apologies from the men. “Sorry johnny, we didn’t know she was yours,” and “we were just having fun,” and “we weren’t going to hurt her.”
They knew johnny? I didn’t like it that they knew johnny. I am not sure why, but it bothered me greatly. I wanted to say, I’m not his. But then, I supposed I was. And for a moment, I wondered if he had taken my spirit. Maybe that was why I wanted him so much.
“You’ve now been warned,” johnny said. “I do not generally warn, so feel fortunate.”
I heard noises at the entrance door, like a key opening the lock. I spun around, pressing my back against johnny’s. I watched the door open. A small Italian man entered all jazzy in maroon dress pants, white silk shirt, and thick gold chain around his neck. His gaunt face was lost in the weight of his large round eyes, fixed in a punitive glare at my three attackers. He reminded me of a giant rat. Hence, I labeled him, Rat Man.
johnny didn’t turn around. I suppose he had eyes in the back of his head or something.
Rat Man walked past us. His pants made brushing noises, and emitted a newly bought scent, or was he wearing cologne?
He reached the three men and yelled in a thick Italian accent. “What’s goin’ on here?”
I resumed my former position with hands on johnny’s back, but peeked my head out to view the scene. “They attacked me,” I said like a little girl tattling on her big brothers.
“My apologies, johnny,” said Rat Man nervously. “It won’t happen again.” Then he turned to the men and started pushing and slapping them. “You guys high on la glass again!”
I thought to myself, alcohol?
johnny turned his head slightly back to me, then whispered, “Meth.”
“Let’s get out of here.” I stepped back, pulling his shirt. But he didn’t budge.
Rat Man shouted louder at the men, “What ya doin, you wanna put this place out of business, huh!” I heard a slap. “Huh!” I heard another slap.
johnny said, “This is your retribution, Jen . . . watch.”
I tugged at his shirt again. “I want to go. I feel like he’s yelling at me.”
He looked over his shoulder at me, his dark eyes glittering indomitable strength. “Even if he was, it needn’t bother you.”
“But it does bother me!” I heard more slapping, grunting, and groaning. “Please let’s go.”
johnny faced forward to watch Rat Man pummel his employees. Didn’t he care how I felt? Why should he? I mean, after all, he’d practically laughed in my face when I burned the Zandron.
Suddenly, the commotion stopped. “Miss,” said Rat Man. Half-amused, he asked johnny, “Is she back there?”
I peeked my head out to the right of johnny’s arm. That’s all he was getting—my head. Even though I was mad at johnny, I guess I still needed him.
“Hey,” he said, “I apologize for their behavior. It won’t happen again. You can come back, on the house, any time. They wouldn’t have harmed you.” Then his face crumpled. “Hey, aren’t you the one that was on TV,” he snickered, “the one who thought male strip joints should remain open?”
I was really beginning to regret that I ever made that speech.
Rat Man turned back to the guys and grinned. Then he looked at johnny and me, and said sheepishly, “You have to admit, don’t you, johnny, that she had it coming.”
“What she does or does not have coming is not your business.” johnny stared at him with hooded eyes. Was Rat Man’s life in danger? Did he call for chaos? If johnny mainly punished wrong doers, maybe he wasn’t so bad, even though he did seem to laugh at people’s pain.
Rat Man stepped back and gulped hard, waiting silently, apparently for johnny’s decision. The other men also yielded to the soundless pause that seemed to empower johnny. Silence always got him what he wanted. I should know. Geez, did I ever.
johnny slid his eyes down to me. “Tell them what you think.”
Tell them what I think? Yes, indeed, I should tell them what I think. I’d been bullied enough. My fear had turned to rage. I wanted to slap their faces, but since Rat Man already had . . . .
I stepped in front of johnny, touching my hand to his thigh, making sure he was still there. I admit it, I wouldn’t have been so bold if he wasn’t. “You’ve no right to say I had that coming! No one deserves to be treated with such ill regard as the way I’ve been treated today. You had no right to touch—” When I said touch I almost screamed. I couldn’t finish the sentence, so I started a new one. “What I say or think gives you no right—” my voice crumbled, “to offend me like this. I am a human being with feelings and hopes and dreams, just like you all. I have compassion for your struggle in life. Why can’t you have compassion for mine?”
Rat Man snickered. The other men joined him.
My face went white, shocked by their enjoyment of my pain, even in the presence of johnny.
I cried out, “Stop laughing. The suffering of a fellow human being isn’t funny!”
They laughed more.
I shouted tearfully, “Hurting people is not funny.”
My words had no effect. My clenched jaw was close to cracking teeth. I determined johnny’s silence was an attempt to give me room to spread my wings and learn more about myself. “Stop laughing this instant. Such disrespect is inexcusable!”
I directed my comment to Rat Man who was still laughing. “I assure you, sir, that I would never come back here on the house or otherwise. I would not associate with such disreputable people.” I threw my nose in the air.
Rat Man snickered wiping a tear of laughter from his ey
e. “Don’t you know who you’re with?”
My mouth hung open. What was he trying to say? I glanced up at johnny, and did a double take. He had a loose smile on his face and amusement in his eyes. No wonder they were laughing. It was almost as if he’d given them permission.
Rat Man struggled to conquer his cachinnation. “My apologies johnny,” he stifled his laugh, “but Mary Poppins here . . . doesn’t seem to get that you are the Master . . .” He started laughing again, “the Master of the whole God damn game.”
Rat Man’s laughter became unrestrained. And moments later, he and his men were on their knees, weighted with hilarity. I glared at them and then back up at johnny, questioningly. “Master of the Game? Are you this cruel to women? Is the joke on me, johnny?”
He gave me a penetrating gaze that bespoke reality. Did he want me to accept such an awful truth about him?
“Look deeper,” he said, his voice lower than the laughter.
“I don’t have to. You think I’m silly for having all these feelings.”
“Jen, look deeper.”
“No,” I wiped away a tear. I turned to the laughing men. “Fine! We’ll see if you’re all still laughing when I call the police and report what happened here today!”
johnny said flatly, “Fuck the police.”
“Yeah, yeah,” they all chimed in chorus, “fuck the police.”
I spun around to johnny with a huff. How dare he minimize my threat. To let them laugh at me was bad enough, but to take the wind out of my sails, the wind he put in there, was scathing.
My lips trembled. I felt so used. I stepped toward the exit, away from them all, even johnny. I would leave them all forever, and ever . . . and ever. Nothing mattered anymore.
johnny grabbed my hand as I passed, ambling along behind me, abandoning the laughing bunch.
I wanted to yank my hand free, but I knew better. He’d not let me go unless it was his wish. I dragged him onto the populated street, the air brighter, hotter, and moister now.
My heart hurt bad. And though the sun was shining, darkness edged my field of vision. He let those men laugh at me. He used me to hurt the Zandron. He didn’t care about my tender heart.
With an urge to run, I jerked my hand from his grasp, surprised that I could. Feeling empowered, rage rose to my lips. I turned to him. “You!—” My ire was so intense, it froze my tongue. So I abandoned the idea of yelling at him and stomped away straight into a web of leather-covered punk rock teenagers, with pink and blue hair bristled high on their heads. I shrieked, turned around, and stomped back toward johnny, deciding to tell him off after all. My eyes steamed into him. “You—”
He swung me smoothly against the outside wall and started kissing me like cool peppermint on a hot day. And he seemed exuberant. A new emotion? Could it be? He whispered while interweaving kisses, “You. . . delight me. I think this feeling is delight.”
“Why,” I said chiding and hurt, “’cause I helped you make new friends?”
His voice deepened, edged with pain. He lifted his head, and looked into me. “Friends? Your attackers remain alive because you wished it so.”
His wrath for the men soaked into me. My body rushed with heat; my lungs ached as if preparing to burst. I wheezed, trying to get air.
He leaned his forehead gently on mine. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for you to feel that.” He moved his mouth slowly to meet mine, his lips lingering in an ever so light kiss.
Maybe he cared . . . maybe.
He kissed me softly, tenderly; our lips felt so right together. But the morning’s events felt so wrong. johnny taking so long to rescue me. johnny setting me up to burn the Zandron. johnny’s loose smile inviting the others to laugh at me. Those men were probably still in there laughing at me. Did he really expect me to forgive and forget all that with the simplicity of a kiss?
My teeth and fists clenched. I swept my head to the side, our lips parting. “Maybe you don’t need the police to handle your affairs, but I do!”
He combed his fingers through my hair, gazing upon me as if seeing me for the first time. “You have me to handle your affairs.”
I said, “You laughed at me in front of those men!”
“You were funny,” he said. “I am seldom humored like that.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny!”
“But you were.”
I pushed against his chest. “You used me to injure the Zandron, as if—”
He found my lips and tasted my tongue. His mouth was warm, his moves flowing. Dance, I wanted to dance. No. The Zandron . . . the Zandron.
I pulled away, “—as if injuring him was all some sort of joke.”
He found my lips again and my tongue and my heart. I couldn’t resist. I kissed him back. Ah, so pleasant. No, wait, the Zandron.
I opened my eyes in an effort to make myself stop kissing him. What I saw coming up behind him, helped. A Chinese man in tan baggy clothes crept casually closer and closer to johnny’s back, pick-pocket style.
My eyes stretched wide. I squealed as only one can when their lips are sealed with another. johnny parted his lips from mine—barely. He jerked his elbow back hard, knocking the man to the ground.
I winced.
The man rose, holding his stomach, and hobbled away.
I mumbled into johnny’s mouth. “I have to get out of here.”
He withdrew his face slowly, staring deep in my eyes in a Sir Lancelot sort of way, drawing me into him. Then he took my hand and walked me along the sidewalk. His brisk gait made me breathless, maybe on purpose to keep me from talking. But I talked anyway.
I declared, “I’m not going home with you.”
He didn’t answer. I started falling behind him, panting hard, but he dragged me on.
“You involved me in your evil—” I had to catch my breath to even finish the sentence, “and I can’t forgive you.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “I didn’t involve you in my evil.”
“What happened to the Zandron?” I panted for a moment. “Did you kill him?”
“He will live to fight another day.” He whisked me past another bar squared off by police.
We stopped at the intersection, waiting for the crosswalk hand signal to turn green.
I shook my head with a sarcastic grin. “Oh, I see, you just had a bar room brawl and now everything’s fine.”
“Yes.”
He stared at the crosswalk light. The hand signal turned green. Cars screeched to a halt. We crossed the street. I kept my eyes forward not wanting to see the mad faces sticking out of car windows cursing at the out-of-sync stoplight.
As we stepped up onto the curb, I said curtly. “Well, I don’t get it. You both just decided to leave each other alone?”
He looked at me, guiding us along a sidewalk. “You needed me. So we ended the fight.”
“He let you?”
“We do this all the time, Jen. We challenge each other, neither one interested in taking the other out, because then we’d have no opponent worth fighting.”
“So, you’re saying that it’s a demon creature guy thing?”
“You could put it that way.”
“So, you hadn’t planned for me to kill him?”
“No,” he said, steering us off the beaten path into a field.
“I wanted to show you how you could use your light against true creatures of the dark.”
“It didn’t work on those bar guys.”
“Bar guys,” he said, mimicking me with amusement.
I was not amused.
He said, “Divine Light is not so effective when mixed with fear. When emanated purely, however, it affects most people in a positive manner, and it can be lethal to the truly dark.”
“Like you, johnny?”
“Like me.” He stopped our walk. He turned, showing his back as he lifted his shirt. There was a large round burn on his skin. “You did that at the Rape Center.” He faced me again, his shirt still lifted. There were ten little r
ed fingertip marks on his chest. “You inflicted these light burns yesterday when you tried to defer my departure.”
I gasped, finding it difficult to believe I could hurt johnny. “It looks like I can give you more than a headache.”
“A great deal more,” he said, lowering his shirt. “At the debate, it was uncomfortable. At the Rape Center, it was almost unbearable. And a prolonged direct hit could be critical.”
My jaw dropped. “But how can this be?”
“Well, it goes like this: It was never the cross or sunlight that burned the vampire. It was what the cross represented—Divine Love. And what sunlight represented—Divine Light. Divine Love and Divine Light are the same thing. In it, all things are one, coalesced. No thing is separate from any other thing. Dark beings need separation to operate. If the light touches them, they become one with the victim, dispelling the predator role. If their sense of separation dissolves, they as dark beings, dissolve, for they cannot exist in a coalescent vibration.”
My mouth hung open, amazed by how he forever enlightened me about the mystical side of life. In his own unconventional way, he did seem to possess some sort of spiritual wisdom.
I asked, “Don’t you fear me then?”
“No,” he clasped my hand and started us walking. “If you tried to harm me . . . intentionally, I’d kill you.”
I stopped walking with a wounded expression hanging on my face.
He stopped too and turned toward me. “But you would never harm me on purpose, Jen. It’s not your nature.” He pulled me onward, walking slightly in front of me.
“Well the Zandron thinks I hurt him on purpose. Will he want to kill me now?”
“I told you, it was my joke on him. We do this to each other all the time. We’re sort of—friends.”
“You have a bizarre way of showing friendship. I hope you’re not playing that way with me!”
“You are a Shen,” he said slowing, so that I could walk by his side, “he’s a Zandron. Your natures warrant different types of play.”
“You make strange choices for friends, johnny.”
The Mark of Chaos Page 15
