by J. D. Dexter
“Hello, Fyndrexia. I’ve been waiting for you.” A feminine voice I don’t recognize seems to sound from all around me. The voice is high pitched, and sounds like what I assume a doll would sound like, if they had vocal chords they were capable of moving. Spine-tinglingly nightmarish.
Definitely not Josh’s voice.
Crap, crap, crap.
Chapter Nineteen
“I’d begun to think you were avoiding me,” the little girl says, a creepily intimate tinge to the words. That feeling you get when someone mistakes you for someone else, and it takes them a couple of minutes of uncomfortable familiarity before they realize you aren’t who they thought you were.
“Considering I have no idea who you are, I can’t comment. Besides, my name is Finley, not whatever you called me just now.”
I strain my eyes trying to find who is talking to me, wondering where the heck I am. Apparently, I am not in Josh’s brain. The sound of the ocean fills the space, reminding me of a family vacation to the Florida Keys. The wooshing and washing of the tide on the shore, the smell of salty air. A phantom breeze lifts the hair off my neck. I even feel the echo of sand between my toes.
Just beneath the happy memories, a darker, rancid note begins to smudge the clean with sticky fingers. It feels as if someone is in the huge room with me, invisible tentacles catching on my clothes, snagging in my hair.
Whipping around, I trying to catch a glimpse of someone else in the room, but the room is completely empty. An eerie, high pitched squeal threads it’s way through the calming ocean sounds. A whimpering scream from a young throat.
“You know who I am. We’re inextricably linked.” The voice sounds a little put out, complaining that I don’t know who is talking.
“Sorry, I don’t know any super creepy people who only talk to me in my mind. I just discovered I could even do this. What you’re witnessing right now is a trial run. I’m not looking for you; I’m looking for my friend.” Even facing a bodiless entity, I’m not giving up Josh.
“I know you’re looking for your friend. I intercepted your arrow, rerouting it, before it could reach your friend. He believes he is talking to you right now.”
A glimmer of a laugh flirts with the air around my face, almost as if someone is sliding the backs of her fingers down my cheek. I suppress the shudder those unseen fingers bring to my skin.
“Well, while I don’t love talking to disembodied voices in my head, because I don’t, I’ll just leave you to it. Enjoy your day, please stay out of my head.” I mentally form my arrow again, pulling on the fletchings, trying to get a good grasp on the shaft so I can remove it from wherever it ended up in the ether.
It feels like I’m trying to dislodge a single piece of rice from cold molasses; I can barely get my mental fingers around the middle of the arrow’s bolt before my fingers are sliding off the edge once more. I picture small notches in the body of the arrow, small indentions for my fingers to grasp. Placing my invisible fingers into each notch, I clench my hand around the shaft, and give it a sharp tug.
I tumble back into my own mind, breathing hard and racing heart. No more disturbing hallways with doors, no more goosebumps-inducing voices or sensations. No more scents or sounds. Just my normal everyday spaghetti plate of twisting thoughts, ideas, feelings, concerns, joys, and anguishes. Bliss.
I open my eyes to see all of my loved ones in exactly the same place as when I closed my eyes. Looking over at Josh, I don’t see any indication that he’s freaked out or angry with me. Which is such a huge relief, I kind of want to cry.
“Josh, tell me what you experienced,” I demand.
“I’m still waiting for you to try something.” He responds, looking at me like I’m slow in the head.
“You didn’t hear a girl’s voice in your head? High-pitched, like a creepy baby doll?” I’m leaning forward, needing to know the truth.
“Fin, you literally just closed your eyes. You opened your eyes to talk to me before you even took another breath,” he says, his voice even, one eyebrow raised.
“Oh, thank the sweet babies.” I exhale, feeling like all of the bones in my body have melted. I slump back into the sofa, falling slightly behind the big body of Hunter. I focus on my breathing, trying to pull in the terror.
“Finley, honey, what’s going on? Why are you so scared?” Mom asks gently, coming to kneel in front of me. She pulls me up just a little, brushing back my hair, scanning my face.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m so freaking scared, Mom.” I gulp down the lump in my throat.
“What happened?” Dad asks in his blunt way.
“I’m not really sure. To me, it feels like at least half an hour has passed.” I wrap my arms around myself, trying to make sure I’m still whole. I feel Hunter grab the blanket from behind me, and wrap it around my shaking body. He leaves his warm hands over one arm, rubbing some warmth back into my skin that has turned to ice.
“Tell us what happened.” An order from Brent.
Keeping my eyes locked on Mom’s, I begin, “I was doing some visualizations, forming a mental arrow to make a point of contact to get into Josh’s brain.” Josh’s harrumph can be heard from across the room. A thud of flesh against flesh quickly follows, ending with a shushing. I’m too stressed to find out who hit who. My freak out has reached unparalleled levels.
Pulling the blanket more tightly around myself, I huddle into the heat of Hunter’s body, and say, “I felt an unsettling popping sensation, then I was standing in a huge room—about the size of a football field—that was lined in heavy doors with bars over the front of each one. Above each door, there was a lit sign labeling each one. I thought, at first, that I was in Josh’s brain, and that’s how my brain saw and made sense of the information.”
I look around for my Coke, seeing it sitting on the coffee table where I had placed it before trying to invade Josh’s brain. Leaning forward, I grab it, wetting my parched before I continue with my tale.
“It smelled, and sounded, like the beach we visited when we went to the Keys for vacation. There was even a breeze that lifted my hair. I heard a high-pitched voice that was totally creepy. She said how she had been waiting for me, how she thought I was avoiding her, and that we’ve been ‘inextricably linked together.’ Her words, not mine,” I clarify, remembering the sound of her voice gives me a fresh wave of the shivers—like the visceral reaction to hearing nails on a chalkboard.
“She said that she was talking to Josh like she was me.” I looked over at him again, just for reassurance.
“I didn’t hear anything, Fin. I promise.” He lays his hand over his heart.
I nod, huddling around my Coke, before raising shaking hands to take another drink.
“I have no idea what’s going on anymore.” I feel someone take the cup out of my hands, my eyes closing against all of the horrific changes that have happened in my life recently.
I’m pulled into the warm, safe arms of my mom. Her lavender perfume filling my nostrils, taking me back to the days when she would cuddle me in the middle of the night after nightmares I could never remember.
I collapse against her strength, shuddering. I guess I’m not handling all of this as well as I had thought. I feel like I’m being tugged in a thousand different directions, none of which are my decision.
A warm hand rests against my lower back. Hunter.
He’s the only decision I’ve made that’s all mine, and all good.
I can hear mom murmuring in my ear, I can’t really make out the words, but they don’t really matter. I know she’ll protect me until her dying breath, same as any of the people in my family would. The same I would do for them. I just rest in her arms for a couple of minutes.
Finding out I was adopted felt like the foundation had been ripped away from my life. Having everything happen seems like the fallout from that foundation shift. It feels like a small earthquake has erupted and shaken everything, but not causing mass destruction. Small things just moved aro
und a little, with one or two things jostled enough to fall over, but not break. I’m not sure how many more mini-quakes I can survive before I break apart into millions of pieces.
But that’s all for a different day. I have another crisis to handle now; no time for whining and crying.
I slow my breathing, wiping the few stray tears that escaped onto the shoulder of mom’s sweatshirt. I giggle a little at the wet patch when I pull back. My mascara mixed with the tear stains, while not a common sight from my childhood, is definitely familiar. I kiss her cheek as she pulls back.
“Thanks, Momma. You’re still my favorite superhero.” I whisper to her.
She kisses my forehead. “I’d better be.” She winks at me, as she moves back to her own seat.
Sitting back, Hunter’s hand comes back up around my shoulders, pulling my body against the safe harbor of him. He cuddles me against him, making sure the blanket is still around my body. He kisses my hair, before resting his chin on the top of my head.
“Well, freak out reduced,” I say out loud, trying for a bit of levity.
All I get in response are glares and smirks.
“Fine. I’m still freaking out, but now I can talk about it,” I say grumpily.
“There’s our girl.” Brian beams at me from across the room.
“I know this is hard from you, nugget, but I have some questions.” Dad’s voice is soft.
I know some people wonder about my life and relationship with my dad. He’s always straight to the point, but then he also calls me nugget. To a lot of people this seems contradictory, but I’ve never once wondered if my dad loved me or liked me. We have fun together, he’s direct and pointed in his communication. My dad just never feels the need to waste his words. As a surgeon, he did a lot of ordering people around.
People’s lives were usually at stake, so his terseness was more about practicality than personality. He once told me that he wouldn’t want a surgeon working on my mom or me to be joking around, so he afforded the same dedication to each patient as if he were working on one of his girls.
“I know, Dad. I’ve told you everything that happened, so I’m not sure what else I can say. But I’ll try to answer your questions,” I reply tiredly. I feel like I could definitely sleep for a week.
“Why did you think you were in Josh’s mind? You said that you entered a big room full of doors. The labels told you, presumably, what was behind each door. What were the labels that led you to believe you were in Josh’s head?” A pleasantly inquisitive look on his face.
“Um, food, sex, women, and family.” I close my eyes to bring the images back into my head.
“Oh, there are some that look like they’re written in foreign languages and really angry coffee stains, too.” My eyes pop back open. “I just figured Josh’s brain didn’t have a cohesive title for each door considering there were so many of them.” I shrug my shoulders, looking at Josh.
“Angry coffee stains? Really?” he says blandly.
“Yeah, like from that movie about aliens with the linguist, the one with the red-headed actress you have a thing for. And I have no idea why I think they are angry, it’s just the vibe I got,” I clarify.
“Could you draw a couple of them?” Mark asks.
“I could try, but I make no promises.” I love arts and crafts, but my skills are more geared towards abstract than concrete. This might actually work, but reproductions are not my strong suit.
“Give it your best shot. I have a colleague who might be able to help us,” Mark says, his eyes bright.
“Okay.” I give him a look like he’s a little crazy, but I get up from my comfortable perch against Hunter, and go into the tiny office at the back of the house. The office is a really loose term for extra room that has a desk and chair. I don’t even have a computer hooked up in here.
I pull some blank printer paper out of a left-over ream from the clinic that I had brought home. Grabbing my cup of Sharpies, I walk back out into the kitchen. Barely listening to the conversation happening around me, I concentrate on bringing the images back into my mind.
I get a coffee cup out of the cabinet, pour a small amount of Coke onto a plate, just enough to coat the bottom rim of the cup. I let the cup sit there for a couple of seconds, letting it get really wet. Moving the cup around a little making sure the entire of the rim has soda on it, I remove it from the plate, placing the cup upright on the paper.
Rolling the rim around on the page, I lift the cup up and look at the resulting image.
Looks like a coffee stain to me.
I get a paper towel, soaking up the remainder of the soda. Stepping back to look at the open circle of brown leeching into the fibers of the paper, I think of the best way to get the splatters around the edges just right. I could try to use the markers, but I think they would look too purposely placed.
I rummage around in my junk drawer, pushing aside the scissors, letter opener, tape, and rubber bands. I finally find what I’m looking for: a left-over straw from some night of take out. I take the wrapper off the long plastic cylinder, slurping up the remaining Coke from the plate. The sucking noises drawing attention from the other room. After giving me annoyed looks for interrupting them, they all turn back to the conversation.
Making sure to keep some of the liquid in the tunnel of the straw, I lean over the page, blowing out the tiny remnants of the soda onto the right edge of the circle. Tiny splatters dot the once pristine white paper. It really does remind me of the alien language from that movie.
I pick up the paper, wave it around to help it dry before passing it around to everyone in the other room. No need to get soda spots all over clothes or furniture. Testing a spot with my finger—just a little damp—I walk out with my masterpiece and hand it to Mark.
“This is exactly what it looked like?” His look of concentration as his eyes trace the image over the page makes me think of him crouched over a microscope and making diligent notes.
“Well, no, but it’s as close as I can get from memory.” I admit, making my way back over to Hunter.
“Doing okay?” Hunter asks quietly as he looks up at me, concern etched onto his handsome face.
“Not really, but there’s not a lot I can do about that right now, though.” I sound sulky to my own ears. I fidget with the blanket, twisting the corner around my finger.
Suck it up, buttercup. We’ve got crises to manage.
“Come on,” he says to me. Then he’s standing up, pulling me with him.
All of the conversations grind to a surprised halt.
“I’m taking Finley on a walk around the block. We’ll be back shortly,” he announces. He grabs my shoes from beside the door and pushes me out the opening before anyone can make a peep.
Outside the weather is gorgeous, gorgeous enough to take my mind off the fact that I was shot at, again. The warm wind blows my hair around my face, catching in my eye lashes, on my lips. I can hear kids playing outside a couple houses down, their shrieks of laughter and joy bringing a smile to my lips.
The sunshine chases the chill from my body, enough that I push up the arms of my battered sweatshirt. Hunter is quiet as we walk, just letting me soak in the normal. Our joined hands swing slightly between our bodies, our footsteps in sync.
I take a huge breath, filling my lungs to capacity, holding it until my brain starts screaming at me, then push it out of my mouth forcefully. I do this a couple of times, really experiencing how the breath feels, how it fills my body before I feel the sudden loss of it. I have done this since grad school, a way of dealing with overwhelming feelings, stress, deadlines, and everything else that goes along with heavy responsibility.
“Feeling better?” Hunter asks as we turn the first corner.
“Yeah. Thanks for rescuing me.”
“I was getting overwhelmed, so I can only imagine how you were feeling with all of it.” He squeezes my hand.
Sometimes, the things he says to me are the absolute best things he possibly could say. A
nd usually the things I most need to hear. I pull him to a stop, wrapping my arms around his waist, laying my head on his chest, right under his chin.
His delicious man-smell is heightened after being soaked in sunshine and goodness. His heartbeat soothes my own; I just lean against him. His arms cross my upper back, his hands resting above the swells of either hip. We just stand there in the gutters, wrapped in each other’s arms, seeking and giving comfort.
Leaned back just a little, I meet his eyes. The white blond lashes are a thick fringe that you can really only see up close. This close in the sunlight, I can variations in the chocolate of his iris. The color has swirls of caramel mixed with the dark chocolate, bringing to mind my favorite candy.
I drop my eyes to his lips. A perfect cupid’s bow rests in the middle of his plump top lip. Not to be outdone, the bottom lip pouts the tiniest bit, making his lips utterly kissable.
His lips quirk at the corner, his micro dimple flashing at me, just before his lips meet mine, and then I can see nothing, but the wash of colors behind my eyelids.
The Spectrum rises, a symphony of every possible color floating in my mind’s eye. Pushing it aside, I focus on how his mouth feels against mine. I never want to miss a second of his kisses.
His mouth is firm, his lips gentle. I push up into his arms, pulling his head even closer to mine, intensifying the kiss. I swallow his low groan, my own escaping into his mouth. Our tongues play a quick game of hide and seek, before he sucks my tongue into the hot cavern of his mouth.
I feel this kiss all the way through me, tightening parts of my body while liquifying others. The sensation moves lower, tightening and pulsing through my core.
HONK!
The blare of a passing horn rips us out of each other’s arms. I’m pretty sure my own look of dawning horror matches the one I see on his face.
His lips are swollen and flushed with color, his eyes heavy and heated. His breathing panting in and out of his slightly open mouth.
