"No she didn't meet my dad there...she starved there. You see the finest dancer in all of the great state of Nebraska, makes you number ten thousand in New York." She sighed as if it were her dreams that had faded away under the lights of Broadway.
"So what did she do?"
"I don't know. Worked I suppose, but she left New York for a spot in a small time dance company in Connecticut and that's where she met my dad. They fell in love and she gave up any chance at her dream to be with him."
He shook his head, wondering what it must be like to give up your dreams. His own dream was as simple as it was unlikely to attain, he wanted to be normal. He wanted not to be this giant freak of a man. "Wow, gave up her dreams just like that."
"Yes, love makes you do the craziest things." Her voice came out from deep within her and it was a hollow whisper, devoid of any strength. Her smile had become a thin line on her clouded face and her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears.
Jim knew what she had done to the last man that had loved her. Lisa had told him the story during the long agonizing hours they'd spent together the night before and now he sat there speechless. Not knowing what to say, he kept his eyes down so as not to embarrass her and they became mired in another long silence.
"Have you ever been in love?" she asked quietly.
He swallowed hard, wishing she'd asked about anything else. His history of relationships was short and cold. He'd never loved anyone and no one had ever loved him, and even though he had been in a few relationships, they hadn't gone anywhere. The only type of girls he seemed capable of attracting were very large women and with each it became obvious they were with him strictly because the alternative was to be alone.
On these rare occasions, he'd tried to be a good boyfriend, but eventually their baggage and selfish desires would drive him away. He knew it would be different if they'd ever liked him for who he was, but he always felt like a servant catering to their needs, without his needs even being noticed. And unlike them, he preferred to be alone.
"No...never been in love." There was bitterness in his own voice and he kept his eyes averted from Talitha.
"Oh, I'm sorry. But sometimes that may be for the best," she added trying to make the fact that he was unloved an ok thing. It grated on him and he became slightly angry that a beautiful, intelligent girl would presume to tell him, that it was all right not to be loved.
"You're wrong...it's not for the best." The conversation was an acute embarrassment for him and coupled with the lack of sleep over the past two nights his irritation grew.
She seemed slightly upset to be told she was wrong and said with growing ire, "You don't know...the alternative could be..."
He cut her off, "In this case you're wrong, Talitha. It's always better to have loved and lost than..."
"Shut up." Talitha said this dangerously quiet and her eyes flashed with black anger. "That saying is crap! I wish you could trade..." With her jaw working back and forth in rage, she stopped in midsentence, making Jim wonder if he was seeing the other Talitha now.
He didn't care which Talitha he was talking to and his resentment over her blindness to his feeling came out in his voice. "Ha! You wish you could trade places with me? I know what happened to you...and it's the worst thing I can imagine, but, you are loved..."
"I killed the only boy who ever loved me," she broke in icily and with menace. "I didn't lose him. I tore his throat out. Now please tell me again, how it's better that I lost this love?"
Her words were a knife in the continuum of his soul, but she hadn't said anything he didn't already know. "I still believe it."
"Then you are as stupid as you look."
"And you're blind to what you have! I was told that you were smart but I'm not seeing it. Can you tell me what unconditional love feels like? I can give you the definition, but I've never felt it before, have you?" She refused to answer but only stared off stewing in her anger so he went on, "How many people love you? Damn it, I can't believe you can't see this! Lisa? Your brother? Your mom, your dad? Your little sister...uh, Katie? Brian?"
"Brian's dead...or have you forgotten?"
He ignored her. "At least six people! And at least three of them were willing to give their own lives for you. And two of those were willing to be tortured for you. That is so huge."
Her anger disappeared in her tears that formed large in her eyes. "But, I am...was the one doing the torturing."
"Yeah, but they still loved you. Brian, to the day he died, still loved you. Lisa told me he doted on you every second of every day. I can't believe you're going to pretend you would want what I have, or should I say, don't have? Do you know how many people have loved me unconditionally?"
Her tears became great pools in the dams of her eyes, yet they didn't spill over but grew and she said, "There had to be someone."
"No, I don't think so. My parents threw me away like yesterdays garbage and the closest I ever came was my adoptive parents. They liked me, I hope they loved me, but I only knew them for two months before they died, so I don't know."
"What about a girlfriend? Do...you have one?" The dam finally broke at this and her eyes poured forth their pent up misery. The tears became two small rivers racing each other down her face.
The sight of it emptied Jim of the last of his anger and his heart broke for her. He tried to put a smile in his voice, "What do you think? Look at this ugly mug!" She didn't turn her head toward him and he said still lightly, "Am I that repulsive you can't look at me?"
"No, it's not that...I'm just blind." She was so calm in her delivery that he at first didn't catch what she had said.
"You are...what?" he asked in disbelief.
"Blind. The bullet damaged the back lobe of my brain, the occipital lobe. It's where the visual processing center is located in the mammalian brain." She paused as if for a comment but Jim was too stunned by what she was saying and even more, by how she was saying it. She went on still in the calmest manner, "Injury to that portion of the Cerebral Cortex usually results in some vision loss, mine just happens to be total vision loss."
Her mannerisms of the past hour or so came back to him slowly and he felt enormously stupid for not having seen it. "I'm sorry Talitha...this is terrible."
"I'm not sorry at all, Jim. I hope it's permanent."
"What? Why?"
She didn't answer because it was so obvious, her other self would be far less of a threat this way. Instead, she gave a little shrug. "Back to our conversation, which by the way, I was enjoying immensely...I'm sorry I shouted at you." Her tears had stopped at her clinical description of the cause of her blindness, but her face was still damp with them and she looked like a sweet kid after a fall from a bike.
"That's ok...uh, I'm sorry too. Our situations are so..."
He had run out of words and there was a silence again until she said, "I don't think you're ugly by the way."
"You only saw me for a moment," he laughed feeling a funny joy at her words, thankful that she was being so nice.
"Generally, a moment is all I need. As I said, you aren't ugly, though I wouldn't put you in the handsome category either. It's just that you are so startlingly big. When...hold on, there's someone moving about, it's Lisa." An odd anxious expression came over her. "Jim, how do I look, honestly?"
She was a bit of a wreck with light smears of red-brown on her face while her hair was thick and hard looking with the dried blood and it went in all directions. "You've been prettier. There's a little blood on your face and your hair's in need of help."
He went to her and tried to smooth down her hair, he was only slightly successful. Her face was a mask of worry. "Can you get the blood off my face? Is it a lot?"
"It's not a lot, but I don't have a rag or anything," he said.
"Could you just...get it off?" she asked and he knew what she wanted. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and wiped at the blood and did a fairly good job, she grinned at him as he did it. The childlike innocence in her blind eyes made h
im suck in his breath and it was all he could do, not to bend down and kiss her.
He came to his senses and got off the bed before he could do anything stupid and asked, "Can you hear them? How do you know it's her, maybe it's Will?"
"I feel the vibrations of her steps upon the floor; it comes up through the bedposts and down ropes. I know it's her because she's much lighter." She gave a little laugh and said, "You on the other hand, are like an elephant! I could feel your steps even in my dreams..."
Her laugh froze on her lips for just a moment and then her eyes went wild and tears erupted from them, rolling once again down her cheeks. She began to shake her head back and forth. "No...no...please no! Please, Jim you have to tell me that Will was awake last night. Please!" He couldn't tell if she was begging him for the truth or for him to lie to her.
Chapter 11
A Glimpse into the Void
For Jim the night had been long and loud and horrible, so much so that even thinking about it caused him to feel his chest tighten. However, for Lisa it was as if she was sharing the torturous pain of her husband. Will's screams elicited screams of agony from her and his tears were double only by hers. She'd done everything possible to wake him up, including dousing him with water and when that hadn't worked, they had tried to wake Talitha, but had failed at that as well.
Hour after hour, they stood by his bedside, while he went on screaming in such misery that it hurt Jim even now to think about it. Every once in a while, interspersed with his screams, Will had begged in a high girlish voice. Sometimes he'd begged the torturer to stop, and sometimes he had begged for death. However, the cruel thing to whom he pleaded ignored him and the torture went on and on throughout the entire night.
Lisa was a complete ruin. When just before daylight Will had unexpectedly stopped his cries, she'd sat there weeping with hitching sobs until Jim had gone and hugged her small body to his great one. When Lisa had explained that Will went through this on a weekly basis for his sister, Jim had been staggered and his foolish words: "You're not much of a brother," came back to haunt him. Tremendous shame over his stupid ignorance swept him, and he wondered how he could ever face the man again.
That worry was now doubled since he couldn't even look in Talitha's blind face to say, "Yeah, he was asleep. It was, uh..." It was impossible for him to describe.
"No, I can't do this anymore. Jim, help me please. Kill me...I need to die." Her pain at the misery she was causing was written across her face in tears. "Do it now before she comes in! You can say I died in my sleep, Ok? Strangle me...don't worry, it doesn't even hurt much...I've been strangled before, it'll be a mercy."
"No!" he said, and the single word spoken with his deep voice carried all the authority he could muster and it stopped her begging. She sat leaking from the eyes, her chest hitching with each breath.
A minute later, she said, "I'm sorry, Lisa. I didn't mean for it to happen."
"Well it did," Lisa's voice was icy as if from the depths of a blizzard and when she stepped into the room, her cold anger was a presence. "Tell me last night was a bad night. Tell me they're not all like that."
"I don't know," Talitha replied in a small voice. "I'm always asleep. I don't know what happens."
"This is done Talitha. Last night was the last night!" Lisa was growing in her anger, while Talitha had become tiny in comparison.
"Yes, of course. I'm so sorry."
"Stop it! You're not sorry. You're hurting him...maybe even killing him." Lisa's anger started to dip below the red-eyed veneer of her exhaustion and she walked over the bed. The bound girl looked deeply remorseful and she tried to hide her wretched face from her sister-in-law, by hanging her head as low as the ropes would allow.
"You're right. I tried to stop him, at first, but he kept coming back. But...but I'll move to...I don't know, somewhere," Talitha murmured through the hair that dangled in front of her face.
"You won't have to move. We're the ones that'll have to move, now that you know where we live, and trust me it'll be far away."
The words stung Talitha; tears, and snot ran down her face, Jim couldn't help it and wiped them away as if she were his child. She shook her head. "No, stop it. Leave me alone. I need to be left alone. Please do move Lisa. I won't look for you. I promise."
Lisa's stony face cracked slightly and a touch of emotion shown through, but it seemed that she shook it off. "You better not. The next time I see you, I plan to shoot to kill. I have to protect my family."
Talitha suddenly looked hopeful. "Kill me now! It's the only way you know you'll be safe."
Lisa stepped back at this and her face showed open shock at the plainly stated request. "I can't do that. Not in cold blood and besides, you might be needed. There's a...a thing going on, but I'll wait for your brother to get up before I say anything else."
The hope fled Talitha's face and she tried to hide behind her hair again. "He's already awake."
There was a heavy pause as Jim and Lisa turned to face the doorway and even though Jim had expected Will to look poor after his ordeal, the man was almost unrecognizable.
His passing summer tan had faded into alabaster and the dark circles under his eyes, that Jim had first noticed at the church were now an unhealthy blue black. Sporadically, the right side of face would come alive with a spastic twitch that would start near his mouth. The muscles jumping beneath his skin would jerk in a staccato up to his eye, causing a rapid involuntary blinking.
Will halted in the doorway as if surprised to find everyone in the room and he eyed them after a nervous guilty fashion. Lisa went to him slowly, obviously as alarmed at his appearance as Jim; Will flinched back from her and looked on the verge of bolting from the room.
"It's ok, honey," she said sweetly, and gradually took him in an embrace, hugging him about the chest. His response shifted from fright to relief and his face started to regain some of its natural color. When Will closed his eyes, a long silence ensued that Jim was afraid to disrupt, and he only watched as Will's facial tic started a leisurely parade across his face.
A moment later, he opened his eyes and seemed to notice Jim for the first time and the big man remembered his guilt. "Uh, good morning, Will," Jim said in his friendliest manner, forming a crooked smile to go along with his bent nose.
Will rubbed at the muscles of his face, looked at Jim and said, "Hello...um, uh." It was clear that he was still trying to come to grips with reality after his dreadful night.
"Jim Anderson, dear." His wife interjected quietly, giving Jim an embarrassed look.
"Jim, right. I remember, I'm sorry, I just had kinda a bad night." At this, his tic did a small racetrack, the muscles chasing themselves hurriedly and Jim could only nod, feeling his crooked smile go plastic, hardening in place at the sight of it.
Lisa gave her husband, who towered over her, a small ineffective push. "Let's get you back to bed. You need to get some sleep, it'll be alright, Talitha is awake now."
"Which Talitha is this?" he asked.
Jim answered from his seat next to her bed, "The good one." His new feelings for her made him want to defend her at every opportunity and he fought the urge to reach out and touch her leg.
"Oh good...what's wrong with your eyes?" He asked her, looking sharply into her face. The concentration brought about a noticeable improvement in Will, his face became reanimated and the bleached look of skin, colored slightly.
Talitha, realizing her head had come up when her brother had entered the room, quickly ducked it back down. "It's nothing, Will...don't worry about me. Why don't you go back to bed? I promise to stay awake. Jim will make sure I do."
Will's face continued to regain a semblance of life but his look of concentration shifted suddenly to one of surprise. "Can you see me?"
"No...but it's nothing," Talitha responded with a large fake smile. "Why don't you go back to bed? I can tell by your voice that you...didn't sleep well."
Lisa came up to the bedside wearing a puzzled look. "You can't
see at all?" For emphasis, she waved her hands in front of Talitha face.
"No, but I can feel you waving your hand; it stirs the air."
Will looked aghast. "What are you going...Oh my God, look at your hands! They're purple. We have to loosen those ropes."
He started forward and both women shouted, "No!" in unison. Lisa, shaking her head vigorously, said to Will, "We can't, it's too dangerous." Talitha nodded in agreement.
"But her hands! That color can't be good for them...can't they rot and fall off without proper circulation?" Will looked at his own hands as he said this, acting as if he were seeing them for the first time. His tic was going crazy, drawing Jim's eyes to it, but Will didn't seem to notice it and only continued to stare at his hands.
"What is it, honey? Is it a vision?" Lisa asked with a heart full of worry showing on her face; her hands holding the baby within her protectively.
"No. It's my hands they look so big." Will said, and finally started to rub at the muscles of his face. "It was one of my dreams, it was weird...I was..."
Will stopped speaking and Jim was heartily glad for that. He didn't want to know what would cause a grown man to scream as he had. Lisa also looked ashen face at the prospect. She touched her husband and said, "You can dream normal dreams now. Please go back to bed...you don't look good."
"I can't," he said.
"Yes you can. It'll be alright this time."
"No it's not that, it's those children. I need to do something for them and I've got to do something about Talitha...your poor hands. They can't stay like that, doesn't that hurt?"
"Pain is not only subjective, but relative as well," she said calmly and then each of her hands gave a little twitch that was unpleasant to see. "As for my blindness...sadly it won't be permanent."
Will, ignoring the small tugs from his wife, went to the bedposts and inspected Talitha's hands. "Relative or not, we have to reposition these ropes. Jim, come here and take hold of her arm, just in case."
Jim did as he was asked, settling his bulk on the bed, which sagged significantly under him. As her brother undid the ropes, Jim looked down at Talitha, glad to see she was looking up at him pleasantly and even though she couldn't see it, he flashed his gap-toothed smile at her.
The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set Page 48
