Gods & Monsters

by Saffron A Kent

  Somehow, I uncurl my fingers and call Pixie. Of course, she doesn’t pick up. It hurts. It fucking hurts but right now, I need her to know that I’m here for her. So, I leave her a message. “Pixie, baby, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. About the treehouse. About everything. I’m not… I’m not good with words like you are. I’d rather hold you, kiss your tears away. I’d rather cover you with my body so nothing can get to you. But I guess I can’t do that right now, huh,” I whisper, my eyes stinging. “I fucking hate this. I hate what they did. Hate that it’s hurting you and I’m not there to comfort you like you deserve. But, baby, you need to talk to me. Gimme a chance to make it right. I’ll make it right for you. I’ll fucking burn them down. I’ll burn that entire place down, if you want. Just come back, Pixie. Please, come back.”

  For the first time in forty-eight hours, I wonder if I’m speaking into a void.

  The ringing of my phone wakes me up. Again, I have no idea when I fell asleep. I only know that I’m in our room, propped by the wall, my phone in hand.

  And the display says it’s Pixie.

  Sitting up straight, I thump a fist to my chest, trying to get my lungs, my heart going, and hit accept at the same time. “Pixie?”

  There’s silence but I can hear breathing. It makes my breathing easier. As if she’s giving me life.

  “Say something,” I whisper. Now that we’re connected, I’m drawing a blank as to what to say to her. I run through all the emotions I possibly can in the seconds that pass. Relief, anger, fear, love.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know I made you worry and I shouldn’t have left without talking to you first.”

  “Yeah. But doesn’t matter now.”

  “Did you get some sleep in the last two days?”

  My lips twitch in a small smile. “No.”

  “Have you been looking for me all over?”

  “What do you think?”

  I hear her swallow. “I want you to stop.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to be found. By you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you should stop looking for me.”

  I laugh; I can’t help it. This is funny. Because if it’s not funny then it’s gotta be the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard. “They got to you, didn’t they? It’s your parents. They’ve finally convinced you I’m not good enough. They’ve finally made you hate me.”

  “It’s not…” Her voice breaks. “It’s not my parents, Abel. It’s no one. Nobody got to me.”

  “Then why the fuck are you trying to hurt me?” I shout, and then regret it. I didn’t mean to scream at her, not when she’s talking to me.

  I don’t want a repeat of what happened at Nick and Blu’s place. I don’t want to fight. I only want to hold her. I want that privilege back. She can’t take it away from me now, when I need it to live.

  “I’m not trying to hurt you, Abel. I’m trying to set you free.” She swallows again.

  I know she’s trying to blink her eyes, trying to get rid of her tears, and I grip the phone tighter. Jesus, I don’t want her to cry. Every time she does, it’s like someone is slashing my skin. Her tears are my poison. And she was sobbing that night when she left me.

  “Don’t cry. Please,” I beg in a whisper.

  She sniffles. “Okay. I’m not.” Clearing her throat, she says, “You’re angry, Abel. You’re so mad at them.”

  “They burnt down your treehouse. Of course, I’m mad at them. I’ve been mad at them for ages. I’ve been mad at your mom for abusing you. I’ve been mad at your dad for never stepping in. I’ve been mad because they made it hard for us. They made every fucking thing so hard for us.”

  “But we’re here. We got away, remember? I chose you. You don’t have to be mad at anyone. We don’t have to be mad. Not at my parents, not the town. Not even at your parents. You don’t have to make anything right for me. I don’t need that from you.”

  Ah, so she’s getting all my voicemails. I wanna rage at her, but I guess I’ve lost all strength. Maybe another day. Not right now.

  “You have to stop being angry. Everything you do is because you’re so angry. You took that job down at the studio because they condemned us for that. We create all these fantasies, we make tapes because we’re trying to prove something. They don’t care, Abel. No one does. And it’s okay because it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to prove our love to anyone. We don’t have to rebel. No one’s keeping us apart anymore. We’re only hurting ourselves. This anger is eating us alive.”

  There’s defiance in every atom of my being. How can she forget? How can she forget what they did? What they put us through.

  “You have to stop running, honey,” she whispers after a few seconds. “No one’s chasing us anymore. We both have to stop running.”

  Honey.

  My heart skips a beat at that. My mom was the only one who ever called me honey. When she died, I never thought I’d get to hear it again. The pang in my chest grows, fucking roars for Pixie to be here. She needs to be here. She belongs with me.

  “I will, if you come back,” I say. I’ll say anything for her to come back.

  She chuckles. It lacks her usual warmth though. “Not for me, Abel. Do it for yourself. Do it because that’s what you want. Not because that’s what I want.”

  “I am. I –”

  “I’m giving you your control back.”

  I remember every single word I spoke that night. It was all true, whatever I said. I have analyzed that shit like, a hundred times. Did I say something that drove her away? Was I too harsh? Was it the way I couldn’t stop yelling? It was only because sometimes my love for her gets too big to keep inside. It booms and rumbles and fucking thunders.

  “I don’t want it, you hear me? I don’t want my control. I don’t want my heart. I just want you. I…” My throat is closing up again, blocking all the air, and I swallow. A big, hard gulp. “I’m nothing without you, Pixie.”

  “See, that’s the thing. Maybe you should find out who you are without me. And maybe I need to do the same, you know. We need to find out who we are without each other. Because if we don’t know that, then how can we ever love each other?”

  There’s a bad feeling in my chest. Real fucking bad. The kind I had when I stepped inside my empty house a little over six years ago.

  “Pixie, don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t hurt me like this.”

  It’s getting harder and harder to breathe.

  “I’m not. You can’t write a story with dying characters. It’ll come to an end before its time. I want our story to live. I’m saving it because I want it to live forever,” she whispers. “Goodbye, Abel. I love you. Don’t look for me. Don’t run. No one’s chasing you.”

  I try to wake up but I can’t. The sun’s too bright. My mind’s too fuzzy. I think I drank last night; I can’t be sure. I stink though and I wanna throw up, but I’ve got no energy for it. Every muscle in my body aches, so I swallow the bile.

  Ethan comes into our room, opening the door with a big thud. Groaning, I blink my eyes open and see two of him. Two mouths, two noses, four green eyes. He says he wants me to eat something. He says I’ll kill myself like this.

  “Good,” I rumble, then kick him out. I don’t need food.

  I don’t need anyone.

  Though I remember I need to be more appreciative of him so I whisper, “Thank you.”

  I think he snorts.

  I haven’t slept in two days.

  I’ve called Pixie about a million times. She’s probably sick of me but I don’t care. I also don’t care that she told me to stop looking for her. She’s not thinking straight. There’s no way I’ll ever stop looking.

  No way.

  I’m gonna keep looking for her until I find her, and then throw her over my shoulder and lock her up. I will tie her to the bed and fuck her and fuck her until she forgets everything else but me. Or until I put a baby in her and she can’t run from me again.
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br />   I found her journal.

  I can’t believe that I haven’t ever read it. I’ve watched her write in her journals for years. She gets an adorable wrinkle on her nose when she’s focusing, and sometimes she’ll even say the words out loud. Nothing that I can make out, but I’ll hear a slight hum.

  It used to make me grab her and kiss all the words out of her pretty mouth.

  It’s been too long since I touched her, since I’ve been inside her. I see her clothes, neatly folded, barely taking up any space in the room, and I have to stop and smell the fabric. My dick gets hard every time, thinking that she’s close. Her wet heat is within reach. But no. I won’t even give it my fist. I don’t want to. I never want to again. My dick belongs in her pussy and I won’t stop until I get it there.

  She’d call me a weirdo but I don’t care. I’m not afraid to show how I feel. How she makes me feel. Crazy, out of control, obsessed.

  Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I love her a little too much. Maybe I smother her with my love, with my obsession.

  We need to find out who we are without each other. Because if we don’t know that, then how can we ever love each other?

  Does it mean that she doesn’t love me? Or at least doesn’t love me as much as I love her? Because if she does, then how can she take this? How can she take being away from me? Doesn’t it torture her? Doesn’t every breath she takes scrape against her throat? Though there isn’t any other choice but to breathe.

  Sitting here on the dirty mattress, the mattress where I’ve loved her, fucked her, worshipped her a million times, I wonder if she thinks about me. If she wonders what I’m doing. How I’m living without her. Where do I sleep? Do I sleep?

  I guess she knows the answer to that, doesn’t she?

  I’m trying to look for clues in her journal, trying to see if I can find something that will lead me to her. So far, all the entries are about me. It makes me weirdly happy and satisfied.

  It’s from her senior year, the year when we could hardly see each other because of what went down with me and Duke two years ago.

  At church today, Abel looked mad. He wouldn’t look at me for the longest time because my mom thrust the prom date with Duke on my head. Gah. I hate Duke Knight so much, and I love Abel Adams so much.

  I saw him in town today. We smiled at each other from across the street but then I saw my mom walking out of the deli and I had to turn away. Though I saw him clenching his teeth. Gosh, I want to hug him and tell him it’s going to be okay.

  Sometimes I feel like he might break up with me, you know. It’s so hard to be in this relationship. My mom’s a hawk, man. She won’t let me do anything.

  I’ve noticed that we fight a lot these days. I know he’s angry but please God, let him hold on a bit longer.

  I hear Pixie’s voice in my head: You’re so angry, Abel. You’re so mad at them.

  Isn’t that obvious? Of course, I’m mad. Look at what they made us go through. Even now, just reading these bits makes my blood boil.

  After Pixie’s phone call, I dreamed of my parents, a conversation I overheard that changed my life. I haven’t been to their graves or to my neighborhood since we got here. I don’t think I can deal.

  “Lia, you’ve gotta stop, okay?”

  “But what if it’s true, huh? What if it comes true this time?”

  “It’s not going to come true. Look at Abel. He’s fine. He’s the best kid we know.”

  “I know. He’s perfect so we need to stop while we’re ahead. Father Knight said that children like these, children of closely related parents come out wrong. I-I can’t condemn my baby to that. I can’t… It’s too hard. We need to get rid of it. We can’t tempt fate.”

  “Lia, baby. Listen to me, we’re here. In this city, okay? We’re out of there. Forget what they said. Forget everything. We don’t have to be scared anymore. We don’t have to run.”

  They were talking about a baby, weren’t they? My mom must’ve been pregnant. I don’t have a sibling so I assume they got rid of it. At the time, I was only concerned with who Father Knight was and what the hell did closely-related parents mean.

  That night I found out the reason why my parents weren’t married. I found out what their real names were: David and Delilah. I knew them as Lia and Daniel. They changed their names when they moved here because they had been afraid.

  They were running.

  Am I doing the same thing? Am I running? And if I am, how the fuck do I stop?

  “Abel, get the fuck up, asshole.”

  That’s Ethan. He’s kicking me in the ass. Literally.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I grumble and turn to lie on my back. Fuck, the sun’s too strong.

  “I want you to get up and go to work.” He looks around, grimacing. “And clean this place up. It fucking stinks. Did you throw up in here?”

  My head hurts, throbs as I sit up. Pixie’s photos and her journal, her clothes, everything is strewn about the room. She’s gonna be mad when she sees it.

  She’s not here, remember? So, I get to play and be a slob.

  I laugh at my own joke. Jesus, I’ll clean up every single day of my life if she decides to come back.

  “Awesome. Now you’ve gone completely fucking crazy. Laughing at nothing.” I flip him the bird and he laughs, clapping his hands. “We’ve got a shoot. Let’s go.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “What?”

  “I quit. Don’t wanna go there.”

  “Why not? You love that shit.”

  “It’s not fun without Pixie.” I scrub a hand down my face and sit up. This place does smell like puke. “Besides, it’s boring.”

  “Porn’s boring,” Ethan almost gasps.

  It surprises me too. I wasn’t going to say it but it came out. It’s true, though. It’s boring. There’s no challenge. All I do is click random snaps over and over, without any control.

  I spent a lot of my time glued to my computer back in that town, back when I couldn’t be where I wanted to be: with Pixie. I imagined a lot as well, watching couples on screen. I’m not proud of it and neither am I ashamed. It was something I did, like a million other people.

  But the warehouse was my first experience seeing it live and I was… hooked. Hooked on the fact that these people were their most vulnerable but still somehow in control. They were exposing themselves but were still powerful. If they were all going to hell then they were going with a bang. They were going on their own terms. No one was telling them how to live. They were living on the fringes of society, and it didn’t matter to them. They held all the power.

  My very first day I knew I wanted to fuck Pixie on camera. It was an intense need, a strange need. Like I’d be incomplete without it. Our love would be incomplete without it. I wanted everyone to see how madly, deeply, irrevocably I’m in love with this girl. How she’s mine and no one can take her away from me.

  I wanted to feel powerful, like a king. A man who caught a goddess. A man with the entire world in his hands.

  But now I can’t go back there. There’s nothing for me there without Pixie. Even my anger has no meaning.

  “Yeah, it’s the same thing over and over. Can’t do it anymore.” I stand up and the world tilts. Fuck. Did I drink last night too? I can’t remember. I don’t have the usual hangover symptoms though.

  “Where you going?”

  “I’ve gotta look for Pixie. I think I’m gonna scope out some motels around the area. Bed and breakfast, that type of thing. Blu gave her some money so she’s gotta be renting somewhere.”

  I have no idea why I didn’t think of this before. I guess I’ve been too drunk, too broken and yeah, too fucking angry. But I’m not now. I’m thinking clearly. If I tell her that I quit that job, she’ll see that I’m not mad anymore. She’ll come back then.

  “And if you find her, then what?”

  “Then I’m gonna bring her here. What else, dickface?”

  “Here.” He crosses his arms across his chest. �
��In this room. She’s gonna be so happy to see this, right? She’s gonna be so happy to know that her husband is a fucking loser who just quit his job. Oh, and correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you promise your Pixie that you would find her a new place to live? Yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s gonna be stoked about this whole situation.”

  I have a new job now. Construction. Roofing people’s houses all day long. It’s not an interesting job, just something to make money from and find a new home for Pixie.

  Ethan’s right. I need to get my act together for when she comes back. I asked for another favor from him and specifically told him nothing related to porn or drugs. Or guns. He punched me — he punches like a girl — and hooked me up with my current job, even though I have very little experience with it. But I’m willing to learn.

  I have a routine now. I go to work in the morning, come back and look for Pixie. I run through the streets, ride the subway, take the buses. I look for motels, any place that Pixie could be staying at. I also go to restaurants, book stores, anywhere that she might’ve gotten a job. She’s staying out here on her own; Blu’s money can only last so long. She must have a job. Obviously, this city is huge, so she might be anywhere and I might be looking for her in the wrong place.

  After my daily search, I get back home and call her. She doesn’t pick up, of course, but I give her a play-by-play update on my day like I’ve got the most interesting life.

  I called her and left her a message saying that I’d landed a new job. That I was done with the warehouse. I thought she’d understand that I wasn’t angry anymore. That I was making an effort, and she’d return my calls. But no.

  Despite everything, I’m proud of her for sticking it out on her own. I always knew she could. I always knew she could do whatever she wanted. Maybe that’s why I’ve wanted to keep her close, tied to me so she doesn’t fly away.

  She did anyway.

  I’ve thought about hiring someone, going to the police, anything that might give me a clue, but I’ve got no money for that and she left of her own accord. There’s not much anyone can do. I harass Sky a lot, too. Never thought I’d say that because that girl is a fucking psycho. Pixie isn’t picking up her phone calls, either.