Chapter Eleven
I walked somberly over to the black chair and slumped into the soft leather, staring at the ceiling. Voices sounded in front of me. I looked up and saw the earliest version of The Three Musketeers movie playing on the wall, absent the unsavory wall decor. I was a bit peeved, realizing johnny could have instantly removed those gruesome decorations all along, instead of making me work so hard not to see them.
I watched the movie half-heartedly, more preoccupied with johnny’s carousing. Not wanting to conjecture any further upon his nightly ritual, I decided to go to bed and escape into sleep.
In the big bed all alone, I heard myself ask, What am I doing? Some small part of me was drowning. This part of me thought of The Three Musketeers, wishing they were real. Wishing they could rescue me from this aching love I felt for johnny, from this awful circumstance that was reducing my morality to the size of a pea.
And yet, the bigger part of me was soaring, soaring into a new adventure, hopeful of making some kind of history where a Shen and Tazmark could live happily ever after.
I fell asleep in my daydream of love, discounting the ensuing dreams of johnny steeped in violence and blood.
I awoke to a bright room. It was late morning. I journeyed into the bathroom feeling extremely ill. I threw up gracelessly, and climbed into the shower. The rushing water sliding over my body had a soothing effect. Better. I felt better. I wondered if johnny was home. I brushed my teeth, staring at my face in the mirror. My complexion was darker. My eyes were darker too.
Had sex with johnny changed me? Could it? Or, maybe the lip bite had infected me with Dragon venom. I seemed to be deepening, or grounding, coming out, coming alive, or perhaps becoming a Tazmark. I pushed the thought away. This was no horror movie, but it was horror, real horror—real.
I donned my white jeans and indigo top, and emerged from the bathroom. I walked to the black cushions, holding my queasy stomach, needing to lay down. I was grabbed from behind. I knew it was johnny, his arms—his scent, all like magic to me.
He whirled me around and plopped us onto the cushions. He maneuvered himself lightly on top of me. I guess he’d been home before I showered because he looked freshly washed. His damp hair fell over my cheeks as he kissed me with campfire warmth and marshmallow sweetness. Geez, why did he have to always feel so good? In-between kisses, he popped green grapes and pieces of soft brown bread in my mouth.
“More Shen food,” he said. “I suppose you need a little . . . now and then.”
He pulled me up to a sitting position, put a carton of orange juice to my lips, and tipped the sweet liquid into my mouth with the precision of mother to baby. He fed me with a smooth sensuality, until the grapes, bread, and juice were gone. The nourishment had revitalized me and quelled the sickness.
He slipped one arm under my knees, the other around my back, and lifted me. He glided into the bedroom so smoothly, I could swear we were flying. He eased me down upon the silken covers and shed my clothes, and his the same, as if we were moving underwater. He swept me into universes of comet and star, making love to me three times over. I was enfolded in black, black, black. The red beamed brightly only toward orgasm. I had been released. I had let go of my piety. A wild part of me had found wings.
We laid flat on our backs, touching shoulders, naked and deliciously exhausted. Now I knew why people wanted sex. Or, maybe this was just sex with johnny. He rolled to his side. “No, it’s sex with each other.” He trailed his fingers down my breastbone to my belly button.
A tear slid down my temple, absorbing in my hair. “Making love is different than, you know . . . the ‘r’ word.” My lips trembled, “I had always wondered.”
“Now, you know.”
“I truly love you, johnny.”
He reached over and scooped my back against his chest, draping his arm over me possessively. “You confuse love, with making love. These feelings are new to you. You would love anyone you made love to, because that’s the way you are.”
I kissed the red ridge on his hand, laying so close to my lips. “No. I never wanted to make love with anyone else—ever.”
“That’s because you confused making love with being raped.”
“No. I know the difference now, and I want no other, ever.”
“That’s because you are confusing me with ordinary men.”
“I don’t mind that you’re a Tazmark, johnny.”
“You can’t mind what you don’t know to mind.”
“It no longer matters what I might mind because I love you and I will never ever leave you, now that I know what love is.”
“You don’t know what love is.”
“I do,” I kissed his hand again, “at last I do.”
“You are so young,” he murmured drowsily, rolling to his back, and then he fell asleep.
I couldn’t wait to paint him. I simply couldn’t wait. I just laid there. Happy. Happy. Happy.
The hours rolled by like a sweet dream. When at last johnny stirred, I rotated toward him and wrapped my arm over his bare chest. When he opened his eyes, I propped myself up on my elbow and stroked his cheek. “I have to paint you.”
He rolled on his side and kissed my lips, licking them a little.
“Well?” I asked.
He sighed, fell down on his back, and closed his eyes. His tone was weary. “You’ve yet to go through the fifth painting. I want to guide you through it. If you paint a sixth, you’ll go through both tonight without my help. If you paint the sixth, you’ll have to go through me. If you go through me,” he opened his eyes and turned his head toward me, “you’ll run away.”
I sat up. Surely he was mistaken. I loved him too much to ever run away. “No johnny. I told you, I will never leave you.”
He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. He rose, and looked down on me. “Yes, you will. And this time, I’ll let you go. We’ve bonded as deeply we can. If you don’t stay willingly, then I’ll know I’m to be nothing more to you than protector. It will be your choice. And I know what you will choose.”
“I love you, all of you—body, heart, and soul.” I clasped my hands over my heart. “Don’t you understand? You are as my husband now. I’ll stand by you. I’ll love you no matter what.”
He began to dress. “No, Jen. You will not stand by me and love me no matter what.”
“I will. I know I will.”
“I have to go.” He finished dressing.
“Stay with me johnny, please stay!”
“You know I can’t.”
“Then let me paint you while you’re gone. It will ease my pain.”
“No, Jen, it will intensify your pain. Do not paint me yet. Not yet. Let yourself be happy a short while longer.”
“I have to paint you.” I crawled out of bed beside him, dressing in my indigo crop top and white pants. “I have to take my mind off what you might be doing tonight. I know this will help.”
“It will make it worse.”
“I don’t think so. And I will prove it to you. I love you, johnny, and nothing can destroy that.”
“I can. Even if I don’t want to. The true me will destroy it.”
I said stubbornly, “Can you supply the materials?”
He raised a brow. “Isn’t that stealing?”
“Well, if you know where you take the supplies from, I can make a point to repay the owner.”
johnny rolled his eyes.
“Well, can you supply the materials?”
He looked at me long and hard.
“johnny?”
“Goodbye,” he said, as if he’d never see me again. He left the bedroom.
I rushed after him. “johnny, don’t go.” I flung my arms around his back. “I’ll help you somehow.” He pried my arms loose in a deadpan way and walked out the door.
I was depressed. I couldn’t stop his evil, not even with love. I turned around. Just beyond the kitchen, I saw a chair and easel, 22 x 28 canvas, and an array of oil painting supplies.
<
br /> I approached the display with eager apprehension. Was my love powerful enough to see me through ‘seeing’ johnny—the real johnny? I believed it was.
I sat down, sure that I must paint. And so I did. I painted and painted, bringing johnny’s face to life. Blacks, grays, oranges, and reds filled the canvas. His face seemed real. His eyes stared at me, red glowing Dragon eyes.
Mesmerized, I put down my brush. I thought I zoomed through space. For a moment, I saw johnny sitting on a prostitute dressed in scant leather. He was making love to her. No, this was my imagination, surely. I looked harder. He was raping her! Chains and whips were all around them, and odd contraptions I’d never before seen. Was this a consensual rape? Were there such prostitutes? I couldn’t bear the thought. I convinced myself that I was imagining my fears.
I shook my head to see the canvas again, painted eyes, but then no, his eyes deepened, orange flames drawing me in, giving me that zooming sensation again. I saw a black street, shiny from a night rain, and a shadowy figure hunched over a man lying flat on the pavement. The hunched figure’s arms started flying about. Limbs from the downed man were ripped off. Blood splattered the air. The hunched man clutched a human heart. He drew the heart to his face. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I knew.
“No!” I gasped.
Then the man who clutched the human heart rose and turned to me. But it was no man. His form was clear, even in the nighttime shadows. johnny it was, Dragon-faced, with maniacal eyes—the Beast. Then I remembered his apartment number 666. Mark of the Beast. Mark of Chaos. Was he—Satan? Maybe Satan was real. He hissed a small white fire, highlighting the blood all over his face. He smiled, bubbling forth a sadistic laugh, “Do you love me now—Shen?” His eyes turned colder.
I shrieked. Then I was staring at the canvas. I snapped my head away from the portrait, but I knew what I’d seen was real. Somehow, some way, I saw what johnny did at night. The dreams I’d had of johnny doing terrible things—were real.
Suddenly I knew why he’d chosen to live in a sordid part of town. He had told me that he responded to those who called. There were many calls here—calls for carnal thrill and calls to end it all. The prey was plentiful. Living here was his candy store.
The vision of his cannibal act was imprinted in my mind, a monument to nightmares, a stake in my heart, and the death of my devotion. My knees smacked hard on the floor. I hunched into a fetal ball, screaming inwardly, this pain that seared me to the soul. I had fallen into the lair of evil, and I would pay for eternity. Staying with johnny was not an option, and I wasn’t sure if living at all was an option either. “Forgive me, johnny,” I murmured, tears spilling down my cheeks, “forgive me saints, forgive me God.”
I rushed into the bathroom and strapped on my silk purse. I slipped on my indigo pumps and ran out the door, replaying the terrible scene in my head, johnny as a Dragon with no conscience. There was a monstrous side of him that could never be tamed. He was a not only a Satanic beast, but a hazard to the city.
I shamed myself for not trying to stop his evil, but some part of me couldn’t bear to hurt him with my Shen light even if it would save others. And my own conscience was too strong to stick around and watch people die. I had to pretend it all wasn’t so. It was vital that I go back to Spruce and pretend it all away. Oh indeed, it was my solitary hope.
I darted out into the streets. Of danger, I did not care. I had my own kind of fire burning that night—violent heartbreak. Ordinary street people were far less menacing to me now. I had loved a ruthless monster, a Dragon, Satan! My soul would burn in hell. What could be more menacing than that?
I needed the church. I needed to repent. I needed to fall out of love with johnny so that I could have the militia or some such organization . . . kill him. I was betraying him, just as he predicted. I had to, lest I betray myself and my God.
It began to rain. My pumps smacked the sidewalk, lining a stretch of open field that had become a graveyard for beer bottles sinking into mud. I ran toward Avenue B, hoping to catch a taxi. I raced past bars and side streets and clusters of street people, scrunched together under awnings, smoking, and drinking out of paper bags. No one bothered me. No one dared. They could not generate any more terror than what already coursed through me.
The rain dwindled to sprinkles. Breathless, I slowed to a fast walk. I was soaking wet. Soggy hair strands curled around my neck. My shirt stuck to my skin. I glanced about, searching for a cab. I heard a hushed whisper in my head, but it was coming from the side street. The side street was calling me as if it were a person. My heart pounded. I knew what I would find. I knew, but I went anyway.
My drenched indigo pumps made a sucking sound when I walked. I reached the end of the street and looked left into a wide paved alleyway. An oblong crackling fire dwindled to small flames, revealing shadow and form. The stench of parched flesh nauseated me.
There he was, johnny, hunched over fading flames that had licked the skin off a body, left charred and ripped open in the most awful of places. Limbs seemed missing. A haze of shock made me feel unreal, yet more alive than ever before. The street around the gruesome scene shined, reflecting splinters of moonlight. So beautiful. So ugly. The rain had stopped. Smoke lingered in the air. johnny rose and faced me. His inhuman features were apparent even in midnight’s shadow. I did not know this johnny. Not even the johnny who pounced on me the night I found the parchment, could compare.
I shrieked, “Where are you johnny! Where’s the johnny I know!” I wanted to see his Castilian face with neatly-combed, long black hair.
Moonlight spilled further into the scene when I least wanted it to.
johnny approached. I didn’t want to see him, because I knew I would not see his Castilian face with neatly-combed, long black hair. I threw out my hands. “Stay back!”
As he neared, I saw wet blood on his dragon-like features still shadowy, glimmering only on rims of contour. Remnants of body parts were strewn on the street behind him. The bloody mess ignited suddenly and the already burned flesh was consumed in white flames, instantly reducing the body and all its parts to ashes. He stopped in front of me.
“johnny,” I gasped, stepping back. My voice quivered, “Tell me this isn’t real. Please, tell me it isn’t. Tell me it’s a dream, a nightmare, that I’ve got this all wrong. Tell me, johnny! Tell me!”
Silvery fire hissed from his breath. The heat stung my skin. I almost fainted.
“It is real,” he said, “I kill nightly. I eat human organs. I drink human blood. And I take human spirits.”
I cried as I breathed, my chest jolting, stiff with horror.
He roared, snout pointing to the moon. Then his head lowered to face me, blood red eyes dripping pain and rage. His mouth foamed and fire flared once more, stinging my face a little harder.
“Are you going to kill me, johnny?”
His voice was raspy and unfamiliar, “Are you going to leave me, Jen?”
I bowed my head, ashamed of my betrayal. “I have to leave you, johnny.”
“I know you do. I knew you would.”
With teary eyes, I said, “What I feel for you is far too much.”
“What you feel for me?”
“I love you, still.”
He half-laughed, “Truly? Eternally? Unconditionally?”
My heart screamed a thousand kinds of pain. How could I go on living? My low voice crept along the space between us. “Kill me, johnny. I don’t care if you do. I sold out my God, and then I turned on you. I can’t be true to anything. I don’t deserve life.”
“Yes, you do.” His voice grumbled so low, I barely heard it.
I shook my head.
He touched his face with a claw-like finger and then wiped something on my cheek. Blood, I think. “Leave Shen,” he ordered curtly.
I burst into a run out to the main street. A cab was there as if it had been waiting for me. Had johnny made that happen?
I crawled in clumsily, crying, all broke up, rubbing m
y face with hands to get the blood off, if that’s what it was. I cried all the way to Randa’s condo. She wasn’t there, but I had her spare key. Inside, I found a note saying that she’d be gone for three days to look at some artwork in Chicago. I was glad Randa wasn’t there. I couldn’t tell her the truth, and she always knew when I lied. I needed to be alone and bury the last six days as if they never happened.
I booked a 10:00 a.m. flight to Arizona for the following day. It was the earliest flight I could get, but it was still too late for me. I drank a bottle of red wine, soaking the sheets with tears until I passed out into a dead sleep.
When morning came, I awoke with a splitting headache and sick stomach. I went into the bathroom and threw up. I showered again, trying to wash away my terror. I slipped on my mint green sundress and stuffed the wardrobe Randa had bought for me in my floral suitcase. I needed to flee New York, never to return. Never!
I had spent six days with johnny, but it felt more like six minutes, or six years. I couldn’t tell which, but for certain, waiting for 10 a.m. felt eternal.
I hadn’t eaten in over a day. I felt weak and sick, but I grabbed my floral suitcase and exited Randa’s condo. I set down my case to lock the door. Eyes were upon me. I looked to the end of the hall. johnny was there: sexy, dark, and gorgeous, wearing his customary black tee shirt, jeans, and boots. He was normal again, the johnny I knew, with Castilian face and neatly-combed, long black hair, damp from his ritual shower that washed off the blood of his night. Oh, Blessed Saints, help me not want him so!
I did want him again. He was my drug. But I wouldn’t take it, take him . . . ever again.
In one swift movement, he slid my crucifix along the shiny gray marble floor. It stopped at my feet. “So much for love,” he said coldly.
I took my hand to the metal dragon, having forgotten it was there until that moment.
“No,” he ordered. “That medallion comes from another world. There is no replacement for it . . . ever. If you remove it, I can no longer protect you.”
I bowed my head, ashamed for loving him, for leaving him. “You don’t need to protect me.”
The Mark of Chaos Page 17
