Through gritted teeth, Randa said, “Show me your paintings, Jenséa.”
Ricky held me tighter, his breath hot in my ear, “Stay here with me. Let them look without you, then maybe they’ll leave.” He nibbled on my lobe.
His overt display of possession made me ill. Trying not to embarrass him, I whispered quietly one more time, “Let me go.”
He ignored my plea and continued trying to put his mark on me or something like that. Little did he know johnny’s mark was already etched on me—body, mind, heart, and soul. I felt guilty concealing that fact, letting him fumble in front of johnny, because my Tazmark knew what I knew. And the joke was on Ricky, and I didn’t want it to be.
“Let me go,” I commanded again, more boldly, pushing against his arms. I didn’t want him to appear the fool any longer.
I glanced at johnny, realizing I had a bigger problem. He had that look on his face—steely, predacious, deadly.
“Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!” I said frantically, trying to save Ricky’s hide.
“All right! All right!” He pushed me off his lap so hard I almost fell. I landed awkwardly on my feet and straightened myself out.
johnny dipped his head back with narrowed eyes, seeming disappointed that he no longer had an excuse to attack Ricky.
I sighed with relief, flipping my hair behind my ears nervously. Then, with trembling hands, I replaced the tangled strands over my ears, then hugged my stomach.
Randa rested her hand on my arm. “You’ve come a long way, Jenséa.” I knew she meant from having no suitors to two. But she didn’t know johnny wasn’t a suitor. Or was he?
johnny walked away and turned down the hall toward my Dark Room. “Come Randa, I’ll show you the paintings.”
Randa looked at me with a funny quirk on her face, shrugged her shoulders, and then followed johnny. How could she ignore my wishes and obey johnny’s? How dare she!
I ran after them. “No! No! No!”
Ricky followed me. “He knows where they are? He’s been here before?”
I twirled around shaking my finger at him. “You go back in the family room this instant!”
Ricky said, “They’re going toward that room you keep locked. If they can see your unfinished paintings, why can’t I?”
I had no unfinished paintings in that room, and he mustn’t think me a liar. “If you come back here, we’re over for good!” I had to say that because if he came back there, we would be over—for good. Ricky was a concrete person. Nothing existed to him but tables and chairs, country music, his four-wheel drive truck, and me. The occult was for crackpots and witches. And he’d not marry a crackpot—or a witch.
He stood at the hall entrance glaring at me. “Damn, Jenséa, what the fuck is going on here?”
“Nothing Ricky. Please go back in the family room, and please quit talking like that. I’ll be out in a minute. Please.” My voice became syrupy sweet. “Please?”
He sighed, melting in the warmth of my feminine plea. “Only one minute, Jenséa,” he said, holding his finger up to me in a fatherly fashion. “Careful what you do,” he warned, as if threatening me. “Come right back.”
He backed off begrudgingly. I heard cursing whispers as he rounded the corner back into the family room.
I whirled back toward Randa and johnny who were standing at the end of the hall by my room of horrors. johnny was breaking all the locks with his magic, in such a way, I don’t think Randa even knew there were locks to break. I sprinted to them just as the door opened. I reached out to grab Randa, but I missed, and she walked into my nightmare.
Her eyes widened, and her mouth fell ajar. “It reminds me of johnny’s place,” she said.
I cringed.
With audible breath, she perused with fascination my black and red room of horror that was never to be seen by anyone but me, so help me God. Shame ate me like a monster. The door to my clandestine self had been opened. I wanted to die, but worse, I feared someone would, before the evening ticked its last tock.
Chapter Thirteen
I turned away from Randa and faced johnny, blocking him at the entrance. I thumped him on the chest, a dangerous thing to do I know, but I took the chance. “How dare you invade my space!”
“Oh,” he smiled, “a thump. Progress. Maybe I can convert you.”
I frowned teary- eyed. “I’m already like you. I’m very bad.”
He gazed into me with what could almost be interpreted as compassion. “You’re not bad. And you are not like me. I don’t want you to be like me, Jen. Not really.” He stroked my cheek. “I want you free to tap your true gifts.”
I pushed his hand away. “I just want to live an ordinary life, and you won’t let me! I don’t want you here. And I don’t want anyone to see my paintings—my room. How could you bring Randa back here to see them—to sell them?”
He stared at me as if I knew the answer. I lurched past him into the room over to Randa, who was staring deeply into my ‘woman engulfed in red’ painting.
Remembering my red day, I grasped her forearm lightly and tried to lead her out of the room. “Please Randa, I don’t want you to see these things. Please, you mustn’t.”
“Relax,” she said, “it’s no big deal.”
“It is!” My voice softened. I lowered my head. “You won’t love me anymore.”
Johnny glided past us, studying with seeming pleasure all that was mounted on my walls: gruesome paintings, swords and knives, machetes and axes, maces and bull whips, chains and handcuffs, thumbscrews, nun chucks, muskets, and machine guns. Oh, I was so embarrassed.
Randa turned to me, placing her hands on my shoulders. “I love you, sweetheart. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that you have a dark side.”
I stepped back from her defensively. “I . . . don’t have a dark side.”
She glanced at johnny. He met her eyes briefly. Then she looked back at me. “Oh,” she said, with raised eyebrows, “then what is this room all about?”
“I don’t know!”
Johnny stood by my day bed, eyeing the swirling black sideboard, black velvet comforter, and ebony stuffed dragon positioned on the pillow. He picked up the dragon and stared at it.
I rushed up to him, snatched the dragon, and clutched it to my heart. “It’s just decoration.”
Randa said, “Hey, don’t be angry at him. He’s trying to help you. He thinks you’ll be set free if you put these paintings on the market, and Jenséa,” she said, examining them closely, “they are masterpieces. They will likely sell for more than your ethereal collection.”
I bowed my head and started crying, covering my mouth with the stuffed dragon.
“I’ll leave you two alone.” She eyed johnny knowingly, as if she had an inside story. “I’ll go entertain big Rick.” She tossed johnny a confident smile.
Randa left, closing the door behind her.
I peered at johnny through wet eyelashes and lowered the stuffed dragon to my heart. “What did you tell her about us?”
“Nothing. She senses our bond, our potential.”
“What potential is that? The potential to kill each other? The potential to drive each other crazy?” I clutched my dragon tighter.
“When did you get this?” He touched the dragon. “Before or after you met me?”
“None of your business,” I huffed.
“After,” he said. “You missed me.”
He was right, but what did it matter? The problems we had between us had not changed. I shoved the dragon against his stomach. “This dragon means nothing.”
He looked into me, and I knew, he knew, that I had lied.
He took the dragon and tossed it on the bed. “You weave childish dreams and then try to live them. When one dream falls apart, you weave another.”
I gasped, enraged at his assessment of me. Anger was a rather foreign feeling, and when it came on rare occasions, I never knew what to do with it. Without thinking, I clutched his upper arms and shook, speechless.
I feared I’d succumb to him, so I released my hold and stepped back. “You said that I’d never see you again. Why are you here?”
“Your . . . boyfriend will harm you. I came here to prove it.”
“There’s no way Ricky would hurt me. And even if he possibly could, why can’t you help me from afar, like always?”
“Your closeness with him grows. When you’re close enough, you’ll try to break our bond. If you succeed, I can’t help you. And you’ll perish.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s destructively possessive, and when you try to actualize your potential, he’ll rope you in. When you resist, he’ll attack you.”
“Not that I believe you, but why have you left him alone so far?”
“You love him,” he said bitterly. “If I harmed him while you loved him, you too would be harmed. Right? Once, you asked me to protect your tender heart. I’m trying.”
His words touched me, but I wouldn’t let them take me. “Ricky won’t hurt me. I just know he won’t.”
“He will. But that you will know—too late.”
“You won’t hurt him then as long as I love him?”
“Unless he tries to harm you while I’m here. If he does, your love for him will snap. I want you to see who he really is before you break our bond. You have ignored the dreams I’ve given you, so I come to you in person.”
“So, you were the cause of those dreams. I should have known. And that’s why you’re here. You want to push Ricky over the edge. Well you’re wrong about him. There is nothing you can do to make him hurt me.” I puffed out my chest. “Ricky loves me, and he’ll protect me almost as well as you.”
He shook his head. “You call for darkness Jen, so darkness is attracted to you. What makes you think he’s any different?”
“He is. I trust his love for me.”
“Like you wanted me to trust your love? He will turn on you as you did me.”
“Just go away, johnny,” I said, my heart aching for him all over again.
“You missed me.” He stroked my hair. “I’ve missed you too. I’ve never missed anyone before.”
“What are you saying?”
He pushed me gently against the gray wall underneath two crossed Viking swords mounted above us. With one hand propped against the wall, he pressed his lips to mine, delivering a molten fiery, languid, long, ripe kiss that made my heart want to burst wide open. But I had to hold it together. I had to.
When he came up for air, my voice broke in a raspy whisper, “It doesn’t matter what I feel for you,” I breathed hard for a moment, trying to quell what he had stirred in me. “I can’t live,” my voice cracked again, “with your habits.” I bowed my head. “But I can live with Ricky’s.”
“Or lack-thereof.” He raised my chin with his forefinger. Then he trailed his open hand downward, stopping over my heart. “I am what I am Jen. But this love thing, I think I have it for you.”
“You aren’t capable of love, johnny. You told me that yourself. You’re just in this for your own kicks, remember?”
“What’s his name has no idea who you are, how to assist you, or how to spark your potential. He’s ordinary. I know you Jen, all the way. He never will.”
His orange eyes whirled, whirled, whirled.
“No! Stop it! I’ll not be taken in by you again.” I lurched toward the door, but his other arm came down in front of me, his palm pressing against the wall. I was trapped.
Fine. He wanted to play rough. I’d give him rough.
I hissed in a low biting whisper, “I’m going to marry Ricky. I don’t care if he’s possessive. I want him to possess me. He treats me like glass, unlike you. And he shows me the good in life, unlike you. He’s mundane and simple and easy to understand, so, so, so unlike you. And he doesn’t expect me to face darkness, perform miracles, or actualize potentials that you and I both know I don’t have. And if I do, I don’t want them! And! And!—” I sharpened my eyes as if to stab him.
He felt it, backing his head away a little, preparing for the blow he knew was to come.
My face hardened. I was going to give johnny the ultimate insult. “And—” I turned my nose up at him. “Ricky is a Catholic, and we go to church on Sunday’s, and we pray together.”
He tried to hide it, but rage flickered in his eyes. “I know.”
I knew he knew. But the way I said it was a slam in itself. I was certain it would bug him. My association with religion always did. Geez, I was getting mean.
“Yes, you are,” he sighed, reading my mind. “You want me to give up on you. You want to cut off the only lifeline you have to yourself—me.”
“Oh, you are arrogant!” I squinted my eyes. “You think I can’t make it without you?” I put my hand over the medallion ready to yank it off. “Do you?”
He stepped back. His eyes looked ancient and wise. “Do you?”
I lowered my hand, realizing I wasn’t ready to release johnny, not completely, not yet. Soon, I hoped.
“You need my protection,” he said, “at least for now.”
“I seem to need someone’s protection. I am humble enough to admit that. But I want Ricky to be the one. He doesn’t scare me like you do.”
“What scares you about me is the reflection you see of yourself. You’re a Shen. You are supernatural. I haven’t even begun to teach you the extent of your many abilities. And if you actualized them, you could protect yourself. If you’re oppressed, even if by your own choice, you’ll die like a butterfly in a jar. What’s his name, keeps you from yourself. You won’t survive with him. Not even a chance.”
“I have to break free of you, johnny. I need his help.”
“He will help you die.”
“No.” I shook my head.
He sighed. “After all I have done for you . . . still you believe I am your doom.”
I turned my head to my shoulder. “I can’t face you, johnny.”
“You can’t face yourself.”
“You’re against God, and there is something wrong with that.”
“You’re against yourself, and you’re for everyone who agrees that you should be anyone but who you really are. You are for Ricky who shapes you into something you are not. You are for the church that deems you a sinner, preaching that you must repent until the day you die. And you are for the predator who will bestow the suffering you feel you deserve. With that Jenséa Renlé, there is something very wrong.”
A tear slid down my eye. He was right.
johnny glanced at the door.
I jumped, hearing pounding on the other side.
The knob jiggled.
johnny had locked the door magically.
Ricky bellowed, “Jenséa! What the fuck is going on in there?”
“Nothing,” I answered, my tone guilty and high, “we’ll be done in a minute.”
“Done with fucking what! We need to go, and you still have to change.”
“Go get in the truck,” I said, “I’ll join you in ten minutes.”
“Now!” he commanded.
I jumped and started for the door. I was surprised that johnny let me.
He said, “Look how he controls you. This is only the start.”
I began to unlock the door, but I was suddenly afraid johnny would hurt him—eventually . . . somehow. I turned and whispered, “I must talk to him. Please stop taunting.” My voice turned syrupy sweet, “Please?”
“You know that doesn’t work on me,” johnny said.
Ricky pounded on the door again. “Jenséa! Get the fuck out here!”
johnny said, “Treats you like glass, huh?”
I whispered, “Please johnny, please don’t hurt him. He has no chance against you. And he’s innocent in all this. It just wouldn’t be fair.”
johnny didn’t have to articulate for me to read what was in his eyes. What’s that they say, ‘all’s fair in love and war.’
His eyelids lowered. “Go to him.”
I heard the front door slam. “There he goes,” johnny said almost playfully.
I opened the door and sprinted down the hall. I heard johnny taking long steps behind me. I turned my head back, delivering a condemning glance. I reached the family room. Ricky was gone all right. I felt guilty for excluding him.
Randa was sitting at my white oak kitchen table, her ivory suitcase wide open displaying several full bottles of scotch. She was fixing herself a drink. I started toward the door.
“Watch out,” Randa said, glaring at me mother-like, “he’s fuming.” She rose with a clear tumbler of brown liquid in her hand. “I’m going to check out your paintings again.” She passed johnny who was on his way to her liquor.
Good. That would distract him.
I went outside, down the three front steps, and glanced to my right. “Ricky?”
I was about to look left when I was grabbed. I shrieked. Ricky pushed me hard against the house wall. His big hands crushed my upper arms. I tried real hard not to call for johnny.
Ricky howled through gritted teeth, “You fucking did it with him, didn’t you?”
“You’re hurting me!”
“And you’re not hurting me? I treat you like a fucking princess and you do it with him.”
“I didn’t!”
“If you didn’t, you have.”
“Stop this, Ricky!”
“You want him.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. I can tell.”
“I don’t!” I said, “I want you!”
“Then take off that damn serpent necklace.”
“I can’t—yet.”
“I heard you talking in the room.” He curled his lip. “You think he’s tougher than me.”
Oh Blessed Saints, how could he have heard that? I had whispered so lightly. Suddenly it dawned on me. johnny. That dirty rat. He’d made it so that Ricky could hear. He’d wanted Ricky to hear, to force a confrontation. Well, I wasn’t going to give it to him!
Ricky had been rambling, and I missed some of what he said. I wished I had missed it all. His crude speech wounded me.
The Mark of Chaos Page 19
