Just so he knew.
Just so he knew that she was alive, still breathing, still gasping in great big breaths of beautiful, fragrant air. His lovely girl.
“Where are you planning to go, sweetheart?” he asked her. Wherever it was, he wouldn’t follow. The desert was his home, the wild animals prowling around inside his skin. The sun had baked itself right into his psyche, and if he walked too far past its borders, he would collapse into sand that filled his shoes. He knew that Bryony would come home, one way or another. She would either visit or be shipped home in bits and parts. The desert would have her when all was said and done, but not yet. Not quite yet.
“I’m not sure yet, Daddy. I was thinking that maybe I’d like to see cornfields.”
“All of the old horror movies revolve around cornfields.”
“Or New York City.”
“You’ll be murdered in no time, that be true.”
“How about . . . the Northwest?”
“Ah, honey, serial killers spawn there. I don’t think you’d last a day, dear heart.”
Bryony shook her head. Her hair fell in golden waves down to her waist, pulled back by a headband, the way that a good girl wears her hair. Red Riding hood wore headbands, as did Alice in Wonderland. Both were in peril. Both suffered. This fact was not lost on her father.
“Daddy, I want to see things. I want to be somewhere that I have never been before. I hate the desert, and want to be somewhere different.”
Stop pulled himself up from the lawn chair. He hugged his girl.
“Don’t be letting me stop you, Bryony. You go and be what you need to be. Do what you need to do. You know that I’ll always be here, yes? Go be free, sweetheart. Live a good life.”
Bryony skipped inside, much lighter after this conversation with her father. Stop sat himself back down on the chair in the tender way that he had picked up over the last eighteen years. She was a good girl, a sweet soul. Somehow she took whatever was in her hands and threw it across the sky like diamonds. This was what she needed to do, and the world needed her as much as she needed to see what life was like outside of a town built on death.
But he was sure going to miss her.
Stop stayed up very late that night, staring out at the desert. He learned long ago not to turn on the lights, to let the darkness creep closer. He didn’t want to know what was staring back. Staring at him, and staring at his little girl.
CHAPTER FIVE
A Killing Sort of Love
Bryony ran.
She ran for many years, bouncing in and out of school, and discovering that she did not care for (in this order): journalism, engineering, dancing, creative writing, psychology, or dirt biking. Dirt biking was more of a fluke, a class that she joined in an out-of-this-world moment of sheer whimsy, because she wanted to do something fun and free and different. The bike itself wasn’t a problem, but a bike plus dirt equaled a hot, cranky, sweaty Bryony, and that is never a good thing. So, no. Dirt biking was right out.
But a degree is a degree, regardless of what it is in, and all of the world looks fondly upon said degree, so Bryony slogged through her psychology classes. She also briefly considered Criminology, but figured that most of the people there weren’t as interested in capturing criminals as they were about criminals learning to avoid being caught. She was a butterfly, fluttering around joyfully. She was not stupid.
But she was also curious about love. She wanted a real, true love that accepted what she was and how she was going to leave this earth, and didn’t run screaming into the night from the crushing madness of it.
She tried on one young man after another, and it was a fun and happy time for all.
Oh, she tried on Brandons and Jordans and Nathans and Jeffs. She tried on a Raoul and a Rhett and even a Perry, but neither one of these fine gentlemen was exactly right for our diligent Bryony.
“I’m sorry,” she said to each one, patting their cheek. “You are not for me, and I am not for you. Let us move on and be happy, yes?” And yes, each young man wanted to be happy, and each young man let her go, and some were actually quite relieved to shrug the burden of responsibility off their shoulders. Bryony was joyful and she was kind, but it couldn’t be forgotten that death was constantly ruffling its fingers through her hair, and this was a difficult thing to accept. Still, one of the Brandons clung for a bit, which is to be expected every now and then, but when this particular Brandon met an especially dewy-eyed Matilda, everything set itself to rights.
Her first real boyfriend should have been a warning to her, but he had charm and, more importantly, he didn’t immediately cut his eyes to Bryony when a girl from her dorm went missing, or when a young man from her study group was discovered hanging from the shower head.
His conversations started with, “How are you doing, love?” but after a while they changed to, “Are you all right?” and “Did anything dangerous happen today?” and “I had the most horrifying dream about you last night. You don’t happen to be severed at the waist, do you?” When they embraced, he’d squeeze her so tightly she couldn’t breathe, and then he’d run his hands down her shoulders and arms, checking for bruises and gaping knife wounds.
“Your neck is so very fragile,” he murmured one evening, and Bryony had enough.
Really, she ought to have learned her lesson there, but love is ever so shiny and desirable, and so desperately worth pursuing, we are told, and so two Kens, a Nick, and a Johnny later she came across Jeremy, who was tall and darling.
“You’re going to die, Star Girl,” he said. His thick lashes dropped over his eyes.
“Yes, I know.”
“That’s cool.”
They went on dates and to dances where he spun her until they both laughed. He hung his arm around her shoulders like he was hanging up a coat, and Bryony wondered deep in her heart if this was it, if this was truly how love was supposed to feel. Enchanting and giggly but somehow darkly lonely, as if Jeremy’s breath stole a tiny bit of her soul each time they kissed.
One day she walked into her dorm room and found him sitting on her bed, holding a gun.
“I can’t stand it anymore,” he said before she even had a chance to open her mouth. “I can’t stand the waiting.”
Bryony stood still, her arms full of flowers gathered from the gardens outside. The breeze from the open window moved her hair and made the flowers dance gently.
“Run,” the lilacs seemed to tell her. “Have you forgotten how? Have you forgotten what you do? Run, my girl, run!”
“I fantasize about killing you,” he whispered. “I have done it a thousand ways. Poisoned you. Torn you apart with my bare hands. Snapped your bones and heard you sigh as your life ends.”
“Run!” shrieked the lilacs again, and one threw itself from the bouquet and onto the floor.
“I think about it because I love you,” Jeremy said. The gun twitched in his hand and Bryony saw his eyes were wild with rage and torment and, yes indeed, a killing sort of love. This nearly made Bryony smile.
“I mean,” he said, standing and pointing the gun to Bryony’s cheek, “if you are going to be murdered, shouldn’t it be by me? Wouldn’t that be kindness? Is it possible to love somebody any more than that?”
“You’re stronger than this,” she said, but even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. It was a lie, oh, it was a lie, but she didn’t know what else to say. “Please” or “Jeremy” or “I could maybe love you if you gave me more time”, perhaps, but no, she said none of these things. She only said, “You’re stronger than this.”
“No, I’m not,” he said sadly, and his finger moved on the trigger.
Bryony closed her eyes.
CHAPTER SIX
Piece You Together
Bryony walked out of school with a degree and several quirky friends who despised each other greatly. But she often found herself thinking about how the smell of fireworks would forever remind her of gunfire and blood and of her dear Jeremy who, even with his skull
in pieces, remained tall and darling. His death decorated her spirit with sharp, crystalline stars of sorrow, and this moved the hearts of her dear friends, who loved Bryony and vowed to come to her funeral when the time came.
“Poor girl, she is not long for this world,” they all thought. “I wonder how they will do her hair when she is dead. I hope that they fill her casket with roses/irises/daffodils. I will write her a tragically romantic love note and slip it inside. I will shake the hand of her father. I will cry bitter tears and mourn her.”
Then they all scurried back to work on their dissertations and fell asleep at their desks, dreaming sweet dreams of an exquisite corpse.
Bryony had dreams of her own. She took her degree and promptly rejoiced. “Yay, yay, and hooray!” she said, and called her father, who did a little dance right there, holding the phone in one hand and his sagging trousers in the other.
“We’re educated! We’re educated!” he yelled, and they laughed and she bubbled and he bubbled back, and both were equal parts excited and relieved. When the talk finally died down some, Stop asked Bryony about something that he had been thinking upon for quite some time.
“So,” he said calmly, like it ain’t no thing, “what are your plans now, my girl?”
Bryony thought for a minute, and then she said, “Daddy, I think that I would like to fall in love.”
Stop had often thought of this himself, and he nodded, although of course she couldn’t see him. Stop was all for his little girl falling in love, because she had a lot of love to give. Hopefully she would meet a nice young man who had love to give back, and plenty of it, and it would be a happy and desirable affair. Still, being a father, and more importantly her father, he felt that he must do the responsible thing, which was to ask, “And what about your fate, Bryony? What will this boy do when he comes home one day, and he calls your name, but you are nowhere to be found? Or you are to be found, but scattered all over the room? Will he drop to his knees, kiss your hands and say, ‘Oh, my darling, what have they done to you?’ Will he then walk across the hall and collect your toes, and your arms, and sob into your bosom and legs, and piece you all together so that he can hold you one last time? Have you thought of this?” He knew that she had.
Her reply was instant. “Yes, Daddy. But the man that I fall in love with will be strong enough to survive when I no longer will. He will be prepared. And he will love me all the more because he will understand what a fragile thing life is, and that every moment might be our last. And whenever we fight, he will call me up immediately and say, ‘I’m so sorry, love, because I don’t want those hateful things to be the last words that you ever hear from me. I love you, I love you, I love you.’ Don’t you think this will be the case?”
Stop knew this would be the case, because he felt that very same way about his daughter. It does teach you what real love is, knowing that it will be yanked away some day without your consent. It does make you appreciate that which will no longer be there.
“He will be a lucky man,” he said, and he knew that Bryony was smiling on her end of the phone. “I wish you both well.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said, and promptly set about to fall in love. She read a book about orcas and fog and funny little sharks spotted in the Puget Sound, so she decided on a trip that would take her to Seattle. After moving, she followed a suggestion to wander Pike Place Market in the mornings, and her very first day there she saw a young man with too-long hair strumming his guitar with his case open at his feet. His name was Eddie, and he was constantly filled with sorrow, and he was beautiful, and she immediately knew that he was the man that she always wanted. She was ready for him.
Eddie, on the other hand, was not quite so ready for her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Eddie Meets Bryony
Eddie Warshouski didn’t have anything that he really loved besides his guitar. He called her Jasmine, and grudgingly shelled out the money so that he could buy the permit necessary to play her down at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The crowd was good there; happy, wide-eyed tourists, wide-eyed locals who came for the flowers and to support each other. They stopped by the first Starbucks and ogled the mermaid. They stopped by the tables and sampled honey and candies and pointed at the jewelry and crocheted hats that were always beautiful, but seldom sold. They made a solid wall of noise behind Eddie’s brain, and he liked that. Anything to shut out the visions. Anything to shut out the voices.
Eddie put his head down and played.
His music got him through the days, and it was even more essential during the nights. He closed his eyes and picked out an intricate melody. He heard some change drop into his guitar case, and forced his lips into a congenial smile. Thanks, guys.
He peeked through his lashes at the slim girl who was enamored with the display of flowers. Yellow daffodils, mostly, and something purple and feathery that he didn’t recognize. She pulled a little coin purse from her pocket and reached deep inside. The smiling man working the flower station handed her a large bouquet, and the girl’s hair fell in front of her face as she inhaled deeply. He had noticed her almost as soon as she arrived at the market, standing and staring open-mouthed at everybody rushing around her. She was a spot of color with her bright red coat and hat, white gloves and a scarf wrapped tightly around her throat. It wasn’t that cold, so she wasn’t from around here, not used to the weather. Her hair was curling in the sea air, looking like a frightened thing, and for some reason it almost made him smile. Almost, but not quite.
Chad, one of the fish throwers at the market, lasered his gaze at her. He was notorious for such things, and it didn’t surprise any of the regulars when suddenly a fish came sailing her way.
She was unprepared, this ephemeral girl, and Eddie could tell by the way that she uselessly put up her hands that she wouldn’t know how to catch a fish even at the best of times. It hit her square in the chest, knocking her flowers everywhere, and surprise more than force knocked her back. She fell onto the ground and began to cry.
Eddie wanted to help her almost as much as he didn’t want to, but his fingers kept working on his guitar. He sent hateful vibes Chad’s way, which was pretty much the worst that he could do at this point. A woman in a sari with blue hair helped the crying girl up while others scrambled around for her flowers. She was on her feet by the time that Chad had wound his way through the crowd.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, sounding truly sincere, which was part of his gift. Oh, if only Chad used it for good! “I didn’t mean to frighten you, and I especially didn’t mean to knock you down. It’s only a stuffed fish that we throw for fun sometimes, to surprise the crowd. Are you all right?”
He took her by both hands, and smiled down at her with what he assumed was a charming air. The women in the crowd leaned into it, a compass pointing to True North. Eddie turned his face away.
“I’m fine,” the girl said, and everybody sighed in relief. She was fine. The poor, tragic thing had been shaken, true, but now she had her wits about her. Several hands dusted her off and patted her hair caringly, pressing her bouquet back into her hands. This man will take care of you, the hands said. He’s a good-looking man, a nice man, a man who will sweep you off your feet and carry you to places of wondrous delight. Stick with this man, this fish-thrower named Chad. He’s the one for you!
Eddie’s snort was inaudible beneath the hum of the crowd. He didn’t look as Chad apologized and offered to make it up by taking her out to dinner. He let his eyes roam up to the white clouds in the sky. It was a clear day, a rare day. Beautiful, really, if he cared about such things. Which he didn’t.
He heard her voice, soft and sweet. “No, that really isn’t necessary, thanks. I don’t go out with people I don’t know. It’s very dangerous. Perhaps we could become friends first.”
Eddie’s eyebrows shot up, and this time he couldn’t help it; he smiled.
Chad’s voice was smooth. “Don’t you go out with people? To get to know them?” Eddie was certain that
he was grinning charismatically. The girl would have no chance but to fall.
“No, I don’t.”
“Not ever?”
“Not ever.”
Eddie played something wryly morose on his guitar. It accentuated the situation perfectly, and the man next to him laughed. Eddie went back to his earlier melody again, refusing to acknowledge that he was listening. They were all listening, and they knew it, and everybody knew that they knew it, but still they pretended otherwise. The crowd was instantly absorbed in rifling through their purses, fluffing out their hair, making sure that all packages and large bouquets of flowers were wrapped and carried properly. They were all here by happenstance, and it wasn’t anybody’s fault that they were obligated to overhear this rather embarrassing conversation taking place in plain view. The crowd pressed closer.
Chad’s smile was starting to falter, lips closing around his white teeth until they barely peeked through. This was not turning out as planned. The girl with the starry eyes obviously sensed his discomfort, because she clasped his fishy hands with her pristine gloves.
“Oh, I do hope that we can become dear, dear friends!” she said sincerely, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. Chad blinked and the smile came back to his face. Eddie’s guitar made an uncharacteristic TWANG! that quickly became something quirky and full of snarky delight. Nice save, Eddie.
Chad was called back to work by his manager, who grew tired of his employee’s frolicking. Chad shot the girl a genuine grin and bounded off.
Eddie kicked the melody up a notch, and it became a fine, jaunty song. The girl’s head turned until her eyes rested on his guitar, and slowly they traveled up until they met his.
She smiled at him, and tossed a flower into Jasmine’s guitar case, but her good humor dropped away when she saw the expression he wore.
The girl automatically reached out for him, but he jerked away from her, and she recoiled.
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