The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6)

by Richard Raley

  Still haunting me.

  My Dad’s brusque, tough fatherly affection during the week was followed by a belt on Sundays. Nothing there to aspire to. Even when Old Man Price had that look of pride in his eyes at something I managed, it was so washed over with an alcoholic’s regret and exhaustion from his work day that it was hard to recall.

  Mom . . . never had a chance with Mom. ‘Good Days’ were sucked up by Dad or by JoJo hogging Mom to herself. By the time I got Mom alone that last year, ‘Good Days’ were just something else I cursed, like I cursed everything in my life. The pain from all those weeks of abandonment wasn’t worth that one spare, random day of joy.

  JoJo . . . affection? Never. Disgust, annoyance, and even anger over my very existence. Like I caused all this. Somehow. I must have. I was the last one to be born. I was a kid when the ‘Bad Days’ started. What did you do to her? I know you caused this! We won’t even get into JoJo as role model for affection . . . don’t think it was ever affection she was after, just a release, just a few seconds of bliss.

  Susan . . . poor Susan. Big Sis tried. Too young and inexperienced to ever succeed, but she tried to keep me fed and cleaned. Something other than a vandal punching everyone who looked at him funny. She had some affection for me, but it was masked by so much responsibility. She might have loved my weight on her shoulders, but it was too much, a trap she had to cast off and escape from. Escape so hard and so long that she’s disappeared . . . wherever you are, I hope you’re safe and happy, Suze.

  Affection, love. I have no training for it, have never been taught how to accomplish that most human of actions. We’re tribe animals after all, how our whole society functions, so of course bonding should come naturally.

  Not for me . . . I’m out here with Larry and his fruit flies. I bred an albino, Mommy!

  How do you just . . . do it?

  Say words that are so powerful, that represent possibly years of connection? Once you admit to love, you can’t stop it. Might turn, might change, might even be a bitter taste decades later, but it’s still there, it’s always there. No take backs. On your deathbed you’ll remember it, maybe not feel it still, but you will remember what it was like to feel it, know the outline of its shadow.

  Saying those words scared me so much.

  There was no taking them back.

  Love is an eternity of connection, a string you can’t cut.

  I know I’m fucked up, but at other times I can’t help but ask myself, why am I the fucked up one? How ain’t it more fucked up to be able to go through life just telling every person you’ve known for three or four months that you love them? Then convince yourself another three or four months later that you don’t love them anymore? That shit is way more fucked up than any of my trust issues, right?

  World is so fucked that a person doing that is just normal, what I’m supposed to aspire to be. Just Everyday Jane or Otherday Joe. No biggie. Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Bullshit . . . you can’t lose it. It sticks. It stays. You’re lying to yourself if you believe otherwise. So when you make that connection it better be true and it better be a perfect moment.

  Cuz you’ll never forget it.

  Unless you’re the dementia chick from the Notebook and then: fuck you, Nicholas Sparks.

  Putting all that on three little words . . . maybe I am the one that’s fucked up. Maybe it’s just an excuse to never say them. So hard . . . to say them.

  Epiphany: what if I don’t say them?

  My ass came to a halt from the geo-surfing as my common dirt eyes went wide.

  Epiphany: how would I do it without muttering those three little words with my foul mouth?

  I eyed the mountain cliffs above my head as a bit of canine poked out of my grin.

  Yeah, I can do that.

  [CLICK]

  “No geo-surfing tonight?” Val asked, sounding disappointed that I hadn’t crafted a dirtboard immediately, instead strolling back along my earlier path where I’d disturbed the dirt in the last couple days.

  “Got a cramp,” was the lame excuse I came up with. “Need to walk it out. Unless you’re willing to do some massage work?”

  “And does the cramp happen to be in your penis?” she asked with a wan smile.

  “I ain’t that desperate.”

  “Good,” she kept teasing, “I only give handjobs when there’s a slight chance I might accidentally light the guy’s pubic hair on fire. We both know that can’t happen in the Geo Realm, so it’s a no go.”

  I started limping a little.

  “Are you actually hurt?” Val asked, slightly concerned, but also a little suspicious.

  “I’ll walk it out.”

  “Should’ve asked for some ibuprofen when we were inside my apartment.” Val had been ready and waiting for me when I arrived, much more sensibly dressed than the day before. She had on a black peacoat, a white blouse, an old pair of jeans, and a new pair of tennis shoes. No jewelry, even earrings, only what little makeup she wore during the day. Her bright hair was pulled up in a tight bun . . . which made me think about a night she’d played the strict librarian to my slovenly customer with an overdue library book.

  No time like the present to start roleplaying, people; start that shit before your relationship gets dull and you might never have to accept the fact you’re boring as shit to begin with. We definitely never had any problems with that part of our relationship . . . was just the Being In The Same City part that caused us problems.

  Well . . . I was about to make a statement on that one, wasn’t I?

  After five minutes of limping, I stumbled a bit until I found a suspiciously bench-shaped rock. At least enough of a bench shape for it to cup your butt and lower back instead of putting said extremity asleep within sixty seconds. Just the right size for the perfect bench too, a four-seater. Kind of bench like my favorite on the Mound, where Raj, Jesus, Pocket, and me all fit. Or: the right size for you to have one end and the woman you’re with to have the other, with two spots in-between. Don’t want to frighten her by being on top of her, after all, and then when you do make the move it’s obvious you’re making one. Brave even, throw yourself out there with all that space to cross before you get your lips on hers or your arm around her shoulders.

  Or in my case: enough space so it didn’t immediately tip Val off that I was up to something special.

  I sat down faking some gratitude that the bench happened to be right where I needed it to be, rubbing my calf like it might actually have a cramp. Said perfect bench-boulder also faced the mountains that climbed majestically above us. Only missing ingredient for a romantic moment was the tree leaves rustling in the wind above us or birds singing away peacefully in the distance. I had to do with mushroom shade, the buzzing of purple beetles, and some kind of goat baahing. Also no boombox playing “In Your Eyes,” since T-Bone didn’t pack one of those in my goodie bag, the inconsiderate bastard.

  Val didn’t sit down on the bench-boulder right away. Instead she glanced about the hilltop we occupied, covered by variously colored mushrooms as it was. “We could almost be alone up here,” she whispered.

  “Space is relative, so’s how strange you find other Realms,” I said.

  “Why are you stalling?”

  “What?”

  “You’re stalling,” she accused with a twinkle in her dark eyes, “and I don’t quite get why.”

  “Cramp,” I whined like a pathetic four-year-old with a bellyache.

  “Uhuh,” she didn’t buy it. Her nose wrinkled at me before she turned back to look down at the valley.

  Maybe I should’ve made it bigger. But it’s pretty big already. Big enough that Poug’s gonna be pissed.

  “I like it here, you know that? It’s so quiet . . . so peaceful . . . and . . .” Val shook her head, lost in thought. Down below us, the farmhouse waterwheel turned leisurely. Val reached over to steal the binoculars from me. Couldn’t see them by the naked eye, but I could just imagine the small dark f
igures of children running about at play, goats and pigs and all sorts making a racket alongside the giggles of youth.

  “And?” I eventually prompted

  “I know it’s not all like this. There must be places the same as on Earth. The cities will be a mess of people, even if they aren’t human people. All the bad parts of humanity you love to mock us with, but the good parts too. Invention and connection and thousands striving to make a brighter future for their children. The bookworm in me craves to see one . . . especially to smell one. Imagination is vision-happy and it’s ever so hard to focus on what the other senses must feel. It must stink something awful, something a modern human isn’t used to for sure. Do they even have indoor plumbing? Has Poug mentioned it?”

  “Never asked. Never taken a shit here . . . although . . .”

  She looked away from the binoculars. “I thought it was a cramp?”

  “A fierce one,” I whispered as I kept faking at working it out with my hands. King Henry Price was not made to bend and touch his toes. He was made to punch people and stand against massive weights trying to crush him from above. “Why don’t you sit down with me?”

  “What are you up to?” she asked again as she moseyed back on over, binoculars now at her side.

  “And?” I prompted again to distract her.

  She shrugged at me, not of the I-don’t-give-a-crap variety. Valentine Ward almost always cares, even if you’re the smallest and weakest among us. “And . . . I don’t have to worry about being strong here.”

  “Oh. You just made every feminist who came before you rip their one-hundred percent, patriarch-denied vagina off in indignation.”

  She laughed ruefully. “Before they complain, maybe they should try spending a decade controlling the power to accidentally kill every person you come in contact with. I’d never give up being a Firestarter, but . . . this is nice. Not having to worry . . . not having to think three emotions ahead to keep from getting worked up . . . just being Valentine . . . it’s nice.”

  “Bit different for me here,” was all I said.

  “The opposite,” she agreed.

  I nodded, well aware that I had ninety minutes of anima floating inside of me at the moment and that I could reshape the entire valley floor if I wanted to. “It’s freeing in a different way.”

  She finally sat down beside me, not all the way across the rock-bench but with a single person’s width between us. So close . . . just look up at the mountains, Val. Instead, her eyes found mine. “I know what that feels like too.”

  “Don’t think you do.”

  She rolled her eyes at my need to measure phalluses, even with her. “You’ve seen me go full Fireball of Doom, King Henry.”

  “Yeah, I have. It’s both terrifying and impressive when you do that. You’re like an avenging angel and that’s plenty powerful for most mortals, even the anima-using among us. But this is more than even archangel. This is deification, God-King of the Earth type shit.”

  She glanced away to the ground at our feet, where the lichen wrapped over a few smaller rocks. “I hope I never have to feel it then.”

  “If I can use it semi-responsibly, then you shouldn’t have any problems.”

  A smirk formed, pride in Val’s eyes, but weariness too. “It’s the responsibility I like being without. When we first arrived at the school and Russell Quilt confirmed that I controlled fire . . . I was so terrified. It only got worse when I learned all the other things you could do with the Mancy. I was so envious of the other disciplines. I wished I could be like them that first month, wished I could just make flowers grow or draw light doodles on the wall or know what my pet was thinking, instead of . . . you know.

  “I’m not a person prone to jealousy but I was jealous, horribly jealous . . . especially of hydromancers. I know it’s anima personalization now, but . . . they get to heal the sick and wounded while my entire future was ashes and cinders. Even the teachers were leery around me. I had to carry that stupid fire extinguisher around. Ceinwyn was one of the few who wasn’t scared of me. That whole first month she checked in on me once a day.” A bark of laughter escaped Val that even sounded like Ceinwyn’s. “I don’t think she’s stayed at the school for an entire month since.”

  “Probably not,” I agreed while trying not to interrupt.

  “Heinrich wasn’t scared of me either . . . neither was Miranda. They knew better, knew I would grow to control it quickly enough; that a struggling mancer isn’t something to be feared but to be aided. You weren’t scared of me too . . . for all the wrong reasons. I hated you for bringing up that poor dog on our very first day. But . . . you kept joking about me, you kept making me want to laugh and then I did and then everyone started calling me Boomworm and me starting fires was okay and a little cool and . . . that there’s an honor in being an archangel when others can’t.”

  “Douchebag showoff pyromancers,” I undercut the tension in her after a bit of silence.

  She smiled her thanks at me. “Is your leg better yet?”

  I’d stopped kneading it somewhere in all that serious conversation. “Uh . . .”

  “I’ve already shared some feelings with you and we’ve had a moment, what more do you want from me?” she flirted.

  Forgetting completely about me knee, I leaned in towards her. She swayed back just a little, thinking I was moving in for a kiss. I smiled at her, near enough to her face to be intimate but nothing more. Not yet. “Presumptuous, ain’t we, Miss Ward?”

  “Always assertive, aren’t we, Mister Price?” she whispered with that bright light in her dark eyes.

  “All I want from you,” I whispered back, “is for you to finally glance up at the mountains.”

  “And when I do you’ll sneak in for a kiss?” she flirted some more.

  “I won’t move a muscle,” I promised her, “and I rather think it will be you who has the reaction, one way or the other.”

  She didn’t move, just smiling at me like she was waiting for the inevitable.

  “Don’t you trust me?” I asked with some canine showing in my grin, dirt eyes might not be sparkling, but enjoying playing the trickster.

  “Always,” she said seriously. “A glance at the mountains?”

  “Just the one,” I said.

  “No sneaking in a kiss while I’m distracted by the view?”

  “Not a muscle,” I repeated.

  She finally turned away, up at the mountains that hung above us for thousands of feet. I didn’t move a muscle, especially since I was trying to lock her reaction in amber. I never wanted to forget it, one way or the other.

  Val blinked, head tilting as her mind told her what she saw was impossible; if it was impossible then it must be some trick of the light or in her imagination. Next she squinted, brain finally accepting reality for what it was. Finally, her jaw dropped open and her dark eyes widened. “You . . .” she whispered before giving herself a shake.

  “I . . .”

  Tears formed at the edge of her eyes, the kind you get when your body overloads on emotion, the kind that comes long before you’ve decided what the emotions are. Raw, pure, powerful. She turned away from the mountainside to stare in my direction. Like I promised, I hadn’t moved a muscle. “Why do you always do this to me?” she whined.

  “Do what?” I asked, not sure how to take that reaction. Every part of my emotionally fucked up personality was having itself a shit fit that looked a lot like when the Exorcist girl spun her head around three-sixty spewing split pea soup.

  “The glass sculpture,” Val managed to whimper around the tears, “and my ring and what you did for Christmas and now this. Why do you always do this to me?”

  My eyes were the wide ones now. “I thought it was a self explanatory message . . .”

  “Most men don’t need a mountainside to write it upon . . . in gold . . . fifty feet tall . . . where every Sawaephim in the valley can see it.”

  I shrugged at her. “Most women ain’t my Boomworm.”

  She w
hined again, not even managing to get words out.

  “Although you’re kind of being weird and wimpy about it all,” I thought aloud, “and I’m not sure how you’re taking it . . . and it’s kind of freaking me out.”

  She punched me on the shoulder. “I am allowed to be emotional and wimpy when my ex-boyfriend writes that he loves me on a mountainside!”

  “Okay . . . so it’s just the scale you have a problem with? Cuz I’ve tried to say it, Val. Months before we even broke up and since then . . . timing never felt right or fair to you. I’ve felt it . . . I’ve known it for a long while. I’m just not made for saying things like that. Don’t know how. But it hit me that all I really had to do was write it, so . . .” I waved up at the mountainside with the glittery, golden I LOVE VALENTINE WARD written across it. “I did.”

  She hit me again and repeated, “I am allowed to be emotional and wimpy!”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  She leaned in and kissed me. She didn’t even stop the kiss to whisper into my lips, “I am also allowed to tell you that I love you too, you moron.”

  I grabbed her around the waist, pulling her closer. “That’s good, cuz I was about to throw up again.”

  She laughed as our tongues and lips touched. “You have to take it down though.”

  “It’s a declaration of my love,” I grumbled. My lips trailed down to her neck as hers found my ear. “They can’t even read it, won’t cause any problems at all. It stays.”

  Her damned too-long legs bent as she settled in my lap, both of us with too many clothes on for our comfort. “If you don’t take it down then there will be a cult worshiping it within a year,” she managed to get out between kisses, her breath already heavy.

  “Only one I’m interested in worshiping is you,” I told her as I worked at the buttons on her coat.

  “Here?” she asked with a smile, the bun of her hair already a wreck. “In the dirt?”

  I kissed her again on those smiling lips. “Just think; we won’t have to worry about you lighting me on fire this one time.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” she teased as she pulled my own geomancer’s coat off of me.