The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves

by Richard Heredia

  True to his promise, though, he didn’t push his luck or try to touch her in any place indecent, not that he would have anyway, having given his word or not. He hated the type of guy who always came on too strong or went for the “homerun” at the slightest indication a girl was interested in him. He wasn’t a saint, not by any measure. He did like the feeling of her squishing herself against him. Only, he kept it cool, under control, knowing she would appreciate it and would come to trust him in the long run.

  When the movie finally ended and “O Diabo” lay slain after a brutal hand-to-hand, fight-to-the-death brawl with the last remaining female, Clarisse had looked up at him, her leg still across his lap and pulled him toward her and gave him a long, sweet kiss on the lips. They kissed until the lights came up, until the brightness of the lights made them both blink rapidly. They broke their lip lock mutually and stood up hand in hand.

  Joaquin recalled her eyes had misted over, giving them a glossy sort of look. She had stared back at him, directly into his eyes. He peered back, waiting for her to gather her thoughts; he could tell she’d been on the verge of saying something to him.

  “I like you,” she had murmured, almost too quiet to hear, but he heard the words.

  He could feel his face light up despite his attempts to keep things cool, on an even keel. Come on now, sailor! “I like you, too,” he had managed through the lopsided grin growing on his face all by itself.

  Her brow had furled cutely. “How come we haven’t gone out like this before?”

  “You know, I’ve been asking myself the very same question the entire night,” was his reply. He remembered she’d smiled anew, her eyes going from his own to his lips, as if she had wanted to kiss him again. He hadn’t found out, though, because right then someone behind them had cleared their throat. They both realized they were blocking traffic as people were now heading for the exits. They’d both muttered quick apologies and turned to make for the lobby of the multiplex like everyone else, still holding hands.

  After quick bathroom pit-stops, they made their way out of the huge movie house and to the parking lot. For the most part, they strode along in silence. Until Clarisse had given his hand a squeeze and she turned him with her grasp. They half-facing each other as they walked, Clarisse adroitly walking backward in her high heels.

  “I think you should ask me out,” she had said simply, walking on her toes as if she were getting ready to dance.

  Joaquin chuckled. “I thought I did already and that’s why were on a date.” His bland expression had been as ridiculous as his reply.

  “Joaquin Barrientos, I think you know what I mean.”

  “I do?” his face exaggerated with innocence.

  Clarisse had laughed and skipped a few strides in quick repetition, so that she’d come before Joaquin, walking backward. “You should ask me, Joaquin,” her voice had sounded so guileless, his mind seemed to stop cold.

  He looked at her, liking the fact she’d dressed up for their date. It always surprised him when some of the girls he’d gone out with in the past didn’t bother.

  To him, Clarisse was the sexiest thing he had ever laid eyes on. He made up his mind, though, he wasn’t quite certain if she’d made it up for him. He reached out, grabbed her other hand, stopping their progress across the access bridge, spanning the small two-lane street below. The breezeway led from the building housing the movie theater to the parking structure.

  The virginal cast of her face melted before his focused gaze.

  “Will you be my girl, Clarisse?” he asked allowing genuine emotion fill his voice.

  To his surprise - and stark embarrassment - she giggled.

  He grew cold inside.

  Then, suddenly, she had reached, forestalling his initial reaction, realizing he’d thought she was laughing at him. “Of course I will,” she said, one word piled on top of the other and literally leapt into his arms. She had hugged him fiercely before she loosened her grip and gave him another deep kiss he returned in earnest.

  When they finally came up for air and had begun walking again - toward his car - he had turned to her and asked, “Why did you laugh at first?”

  “Because, babe, you’re so formal,” she had begun, tilting her head to one side and tossing her hair, a very feminine gesture.

  “Is that a bad thing?” he had wondered aloud, almost the moment she’d stopped speaking.

  “No, no, don’t get me wrong, it is definitely not a bad thing. It’s just rare nowadays, you know. Most guys would’ve said: ‘So, Clarisse, you wanna get wit me or what?’. You know, trying to be all hard or tough, but not you. You asked me the way my dad had probably asked my mom. It just kinda caught me off guard, that’s all.” She’d been looking up at him then, her eyes flashing every time they walked under one of the fluorescent lights.

  He recalled he had mentioned something about the way he’d been raised or something like that – about the way, his mother and grandmother had always instilled in him to show respect, to never demean an important moment by speaking out of turn or in an improper fashion.

  He also remembered Clarisse’s response.

  “Well, you paid attention and now it has paid off. You have me for a girlfriend.” She said this the very moment she had plopped herself down in the front, passenger seat of his car. She had reached out to grab him by the shoulder when he himself had sat in the driver’s seat. “And you won’t regret it, Joaquin, I promise.”

  “I promise too,” he echoed as he pulled her over and kissed her again. “Now, let’s get you home, so I can make certain I stay on your dad’s good side. Hopefully, he’ll let me see you again.”

  “Oh, I think you’ve already scored huge points with him,” she had concluded.

  “How so?” he queried.

  “That index card thing, detailing all of the information of our night out, was ingenious. I think, it literally dropped all of his barriers or defenses - whatever you wanna call them - in one fell swoop. Once you gave him that, he was like putty in your hands,” she had explained as he backed the car out of the parking space and began to wind their way out of the multi-leveled, parking structure.

  “It’s something my dad always said to do,” began Joaquin, explaining. “He said it was something he wished the boys would do for him when they came around to see my little sister. So, I took it to heart. I do it for the fathers of the girls I take out… though there haven’t been that many,” he added quickly not wanting to sound like a jerk or anything.

  “Well, it’s a really cool thing to do,” she said quietly, looking ahead through a small grin.

  He was never sure if she caught onto his abrupt clarification or not, but she didn’t react to it any more than that.

  They’d driven the rest of the way to Clarisse’s house, talking and laughing about a whole slew of topics. When he walked her to her front porch, she had given him a chaste kiss, but there was a gleam in her eyes, for Joaquin only. He knew the reason behind her sudden modesty. True to form, he respected it and waved to her just before she had closed the front door of her house, her parents barely visible behind her. She had rewarded him with a brilliant smile and another kiss, one she blew toward him from her palm. It was an unseen seedling of a dandelion he imagined had wafted toward him, on the wind, to touch his cheek with an audible pop.

  It had been a very good date.

  The road ahead began to turn slightly from left to right and then right to left as he approached Avoca Street. He was passing one house, and then another and another until his headlights shone into the property of the fourth house. Just before the road straightened out – he saw her. A small girl, maybe a first grader, in a white dress with, of all things, a blue ribbon tied about her waist, another wound through her hair, holding it back.

  The fact she was outside at this hour bothered him. The fact so many parents let their kids do whatever ever the hell they wanted at all hours of the night, even on a school day, often baffled Joaquin. He himself had come from a fa
mily with a little more structure. There’d been strict rules, constantly enforced. When he was her age, he would’ve been asleep already, for at least an hour.

  But, then she did something truly unnerving. It happened just as his headlights shined across her tiny form, one second, breathe and then came the next. She was waving at him with something furry and reddish in her hand. Her movements mimicked the exact fashion he’d waved to Clarisse… as if she had been there watching him when he’d done the same.

  Wait, was that blood? came the astonished thought.

  His cell phone chirped and he jumped, glancing down at it, a little perturbed at being startled. It was sitting in one of the cup holders in the consul between the two front seats. His mood lightened at once. “Can’t wait ‘til school 2moro! Thx, for the best date ever, luv U. babe. Clarisse! XOXOXO!” was splashed across the small LCD screen. He grinned like a toddler.

  I have a girlfriend!

  All thoughts of a little girl in a white dress, adorned with blue ribbons long, holding a bloody stump of something in her hand had vanished. He drove the rest of the way to his parent’s house, grinning like a lunatic.

  ~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼ }>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

  ~ 20 ~

  Ricardo?

  Monday, November 22nd, 3:25 am…

  She ran, as hard and as fast she could manage. She could feel It behind her, coming quickly through the white and gray… fog... mist? She wasn’t certain what it was exactly. Only it confused her vision, played tricks with her eyes, making her see things one second only to have them vanish a second later as if they’d never had been. Though she’d never been good at running distances, she was tugging every ounce of strength she possessed from her short legs. Her limbs better suited to a girl twelve years of age and not the sixteen she was actually.

  It was still behind her, though. If it ran or flew, she couldn’t tell, but she was certain. It was coming, swift, relentless… for her.

  She was running over concrete. Large three-by-three foot squares of it, not unlike how forms of concrete were laid when building a sidewalk. If it was a sidewalk, she couldn’t say. At this point, she was merely guessing.

  She’d been sprinting toward a dark looming shadow in the distance for some time now. She prayed it was an edifice of some sort that could offer cover, something she could hide within, get away from It. Her legs pumping, her arms swinging back and forth at her sides, she could just make out the shadow had corners, hard, precise, manmade. Nothing in nature grew that straight, could be that plumb. She kept focused on the shadow. Her jaw was clenched with the exertion.

  Behind her, all the while, It loomed. It grew. It darkened. It was rushing forward like the rampaging waters of a tsunami, on and on, miles wide, miles long, piled upon itself – layer after layer after layer.

  She could feel the sweat falling from her face, roll down her chin and between her small breasts. She was sure her t-shirt was drenched already. Though, why she was perspiring in the first place was baffling. She couldn’t discern if the air was hot or cold, or anything for that matter. Her environs were too bewildering.

  Below her, more concrete flashed underneath her pounding feet, when it abruptly change to asphalt, black and uniform, poured, smoothed over the ground and flattened to an exact degree only a veteran contractor could achieve. Only heavy equipment could do such a fine job.

  Why am I thinking of this stupid shit when I am being chased?!?

  The shadow before her became a little more distinct. Her strained eyes to see, to discover anything, about what it might be – a low-slung office building, a two-story coffee shop, a ruin? She couldn’t tell yet. The mist or the clouds or the smoke made it impossible to make out details.

  Why am I running? What is happening?

  Oh god, what the fuck is chasing me!?!

  The thought seemed to drive her. Fear was a great motivator. Her feet garnered more speed. The pain in her legs and chest was pushed aside. Some newfound vigor was coursing through her.

  I have to out run it! I can’t let it get me. I can’t let it even touch me. It will…

  …KILL YOU, YOU LITTLE BITCH. YOU ARE GOING TO SCREAM FOR ME…

  No! No! No! I have get to -. I have to find… something! But where? Where is anything in this fucking place?

  She streaked toward the shadow, fast. She knew if she so much as stumbled, she’d be face first into the asphalt. She’d scrape her face or break her nose. The skin on her hands would be burned off. She might even dislocate her -.

  It was a building!

  Oh, thank you, god! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

  It was unfamiliar to her. She didn’t know what exactly she was looking at, but she could see its’ walls clearly now. She saw it as clear as she could manage through the soupy murk surrounding her. It had a tall flag pole to the right side of the property, ten feet or so in front of the building itself. Though the top of the pole was out of sight, obscured by the mist or fog or whatever it was, so she couldn’t tell if there was a flag hanging at its’ top. The brass brackets that would’ve held the flag in place were at the bottom of the pole. Maybe, there was no flag up there.

  The building was painted white, made slightly yellow in the strange play of the light. It had a large fifteen by twenty foot window set directly behind the flagpole. The rest of the structure was a lengthy wing, stretching a hundred feet to her left. She could see a wide staircase and pathway leading up to the structure. The way itself was bisected by a peach colored railing; demarking one side of the walkway was for walking up and the other for walking down. The pathway terminated at another set of stairs, leading to the very threshold of the building. It had materialized as she came closer. A few steps later, she could tell she was peering at a set of heavy-looking double doors, oaken, dark.

  She didn’t hesitate and made for the “up” side of the staircase, intent on going inside when she saw him. She recognized his wavy, shoulder length hair, his dark complexion, the thin form of his body. He moved the same way he had when she watched train - day after day in the blazing heat of Arizona, working to get stronger, faster.

  “Ricardo!” she yelled, as loud as she could, gaining the stairs, beginning to pump her knees higher as she climbed.

  Ahead of her and above, standing directly before the doors, Ricardo regarded her frankly, his eyes searching over her, for a moment, as if unsure. It took him a few seconds, but he seemed to recognize her as well. He motioned for her to follow him, an urgent look on his face.

  “I’m coming!” she exclaimed again, letting him know she understood his gesture.

  At her back, she could feel the day (if it was in fact day) grow darker as It came closer, as It began to lay waste to everything that was and everything that would’ve been. It was growing still, in size and in strength. Soon, It would be too massive to stop, too strong to push aside. Soon, there would be nowhere to hide.

  Before her, Ricardo spun on his heel and promptly went through the door without a backward glance.

  “Wait, Ricardo! Wait for me!” she screamed after him, feeling It’s hulking presence began to weigh upon her back her shoulders, her neck.

  It was here…

  I’VE COME FOR YOU!

  She attained the pathway, her legs aching now as the lactic acid in her muscles began to work against her. It was the inevitable pain all runners felt when they’d over-exerted themselves. Though, she was sweating profusely, as if she had been sprinting for hours, something had changed and she could feel it now – around her, in nearly all places, even within. Cold: stark, lifeless cold, a chill unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was iciness, full with malice, pregnant with hate. So intense, it almost made her cry out in fear.

  She rocketed up the second set of stairs and almost staggered into the doors, nearly banging her head, instead of opening them. She knew this cold; this ever-growing absence of warmth was directing all of Its’ fathomless, black emotions at her. It loathed her. It despised her very existence. It wanted nothi
ng more than to smear her like a bug across the surface of the world, scrub her existence clean from space and time.

  “RICARDO!!!” she shrieked as she wrenched open the right side door. The same one the teenage boy had gone through only moments before. She plunged headlong into the structure. Darkness surrounded her at once. She slammed shut the door, trying to figure out what to do next, where to go, where to hide. It was just outside the doors now, she was certain of it!

  “Ricardo?” she implored, listening intently for a reply, but nothing followed, only silence and darkness.

  She turned to the left, knowing the building went furthest in that direction.

  She took no more than half a step when she bumped into him, her forehead rapping against his chest. From above, she heard him grunt slightly.

  “Oh my god, Ricardo, I’m so glad I found you,” she said, not moving away from him. Instead, she brought her arms up to hug him around the midsection.

  The boy didn’t reply, but brought his own arms to hug her back, giving her a firm squeeze at first, and then settled into a warmth embrace a moment later.

  He sustained it

  She returned the gesture. Almost immediately, she felt safe, felt It retreat, pull back, hesitate, as if It were suddenly wary, as if Ricardo made It unsure, doubtful. She stood there, immobile, letting the tainted cold seep from her body. She listened to the steady thump of the boy’s strong heartbeat resound in her ears, continuous, almost lulling, something she could count on, rely upon. She could feel his large hands stroking her back, massaging various muscles, caressing her curves and contours as if he were memorizing every part of her. Like he wanted to know the way she liked to be touched. He was searching for a response. She melted against him, warm now, safe again. Her hands rubbed along his spine, then to the long, stringy muscles of his back.