by Nana Prah
Her kiss to the side of his neck had him shuddering.
More.
“Are you content now?”
He allowed himself one last sweep of his lips against the soft skin of her temple before looking into her eyes. “No. I could look into your eyes for the rest of my life and never be satisfied.” When he’d realized what he’d spouted, he chuckled. “Listen to me, I sound like some sort of poet or player.” He twisted a strand of her hair around his finger, inhaling the sweet scent of her perfume. “I mean every word. If I were a poet, I could better articulate this, but I can’t begin to describe it. All I know is that I don’t know. Does that make any sense at all?”
“Perfect sense.”
Sean couldn’t believe how emotional he’d become. “Are you playing with me?”
“I’m serious.”
Before he could lower his head to kiss her again, Jasmine pointed in the direction of the cabin. “We should head back. They’re probably wondering where we are.”
Sean gave her a deep searching look. Even with her puffy red-rimmed eyes, she radiated beauty. He stroked her face with the back of his fingers, his heart skipping a beat. “So familiar. As if I’ve always known you.”
She stepped back and his hand fell to his side. She shook her head, as if to clear it, and then winked. “Last one to the cabin is a rotten egg.”
She took off like a shot. When she reached the cabin, Sean was right behind her. Her brows raised in surprise as she caught her breath.
“If you hadn’t cheated and taken the head start, I would’ve beaten you,” he said, panting. “I was the fifteen hundred meter state champion in high school.”
“When did you finish high school, two years ago?” she asked sarcastically, probably figuring he was somewhere close to Ed’s age.
“Thanks for the compliment. I must look younger than I thought. I graduated high school...” He thought for a second. “...oh, my goodness, it’s been fourteen years. I’m an old man!”
“You graduated at the same time as Carly. Putting you at thirty-two, right?” He nodded. “And if you’re old, then that makes me ancient, because I’ve got you by two years.”
“I’ll have to call you ma’am from now on.”
She pointed a warning finger in his direction. “Don’t you dare.”
As the tantalizing aroma of a fried chicken, mixed with a hint of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, greeted them, he realized that he could fall in love with this woman.
Chapter 4
Carly and Jasmine conversed in their room, late into the night. Carly couldn’t sleep after taking a long nap in the afternoon, and Jasmine was too keyed up to sleep, after the incident with Carly and the sweet, yet unsettling, encounter with Sean. When she thought her sister had fallen asleep, Jasmine meandered into her own world.
***
“Yeehaa! Come on, Thunder, push it. Just--a--little--closer.”
When they were parallel, he jumped off of his horse, hurling himself onto the target. Good thing he didn’t miss. The physical momentum knocked them to the ground, sending them rolling. Unluckily for the scoundrel, he landed on the bottom, helping to cushion the sheriff’s fall.
The thief had gotten the wind knocked out of him, and the sheriff took advantage by giving him a small punch to his throat making his breathing even more uncomfortable.
After turning the bandit onto his stomach, the lawman held both of the man’s hands behind his back. A crowd of cowboys and townsfolk had caught up and gathered around, applauding the sheriff’s heroic achievement. Capturing the bank robber who’d terrorized the county for the past six months had been as hard as month old cow dung in the dry season, but at least now he was caught. His bank robbing days were over. The wildness of the West got tamed when it came to the borders of his little town of Amberville.
“Great job, Sheriff!” his deputy exclaimed over the din of noise.
“Thanks.” His voice came out raspy and breathless from the exertion of the chase and apprehension. “Get some rope and tie his hands. We’re taking him back to the jail.”
“We should just hang him out here. It’d be faster than going through the courts,” Deputy James mumbled.
“But it wouldn’t be justice, and justice must always be served. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Jasmine!” The sheriff heard the name being called in the background as he watched his deputy tie the vermin’s hands.
***
“Jasmine! Where are you?”
Jasmine’s eyes popped open and she found herself sitting on her bed in the log cabin. She fanned her hands over her face to help gain control over her ragged breathing and clear the haziness from her mind.
When she had a grasp on her current reality, she said, “I zoned out for a minute.” She touched her hip to see if the gun was still holstered there. Gone. “I had the most active daydream.”
Carly propped herself on her elbow with a wince of pain. “Zoned out? Girl, it was as if you were in another universe. One minute you were here and the next you’d mentally left me.”
“Sorry.” As if she’d had any control over it. The fantasy had been vivid. If it wouldn’t make her seem crazy, she’d argue that it had happened. Her lungs still burned and her heart hadn’t settled from the exertion she’d experienced while chasing the outlaw.
“What was it about?”
Jasmine hugged the pillow to her and then described what she’d experienced. “Carly, it was so...” She faltered to find the best word and settled on, “...real. More intense than a dream because I was in control. I made the decision. Except I was different.”
“What was different about you?”
“I was a tall, thin white man.”
Carly burst out laughing. “You were a man?”
“Yeah. I had short chestnut brown hair, pale blue eyes, and a thin but muscular body. The odd part is that I knew what I looked like without having to look in a mirror. I’d consider myself handsome if I looked at me objectively.”
Carly held up three fingers. “So far this is the third daydream you’ve told me about where you felt like it was you, but you were a different person.” Jasmine nodded. Carly touched one finger. “In the first one, you were a warrior of some sort fighting in a battle, right?”
“Yeah. In that one, I was also a man, but huge with muscle. A great warrior. I was a Muslim during the time of the Crusades.”
“You told me, the first time you mentioned it, that you didn’t want to fight in the war but had to.”
“I joined the war to protect the life of my brother, Mustapha, who was voracious with his need for battle against the Christians. To keep my beloved brother alive, I fought.” Misery clung to Jasmine’s voice as she recalled the power of the daydream. “My name was Ishmael.”
“And you felt as if you were fighting in this battle?” Carly sounded incredulous and Jasmine didn’t blame her.
“Yes. Even now, I can duplicate some of the maneuvers I performed. I sliced through the other warriors as if it were all I knew how to do and the smell of blood permeated my nostrils, obliterating everything else.” She inhaled the clean air of the present to remove the coppery tinge the memory invoked. “I could also feel the pain of the strikes I had received along with the stinging vibration of metal on metal, sometimes metal on bone. When the daydream had finished, I expected to find cuts and bruises on my body because it had felt that real.”
Jasmine’s gut clenched at the thought of almost losing Carly yesterday. The fear she’d experienced on the ledge paralleled that from this daydream.
She’d only told Carly part of the story, keeping some vital information to herself. In the daydream she had the distinct impression her brother, Mustapha, was Carly. Jasmine’s warrior self had tried without success to talk his stubborn brother out of joining the fight, but Mustapha’s passion overrode his logic.
Mustapha, older by four years, had lived a sheltered, if not devout, life as a teacher.
Warrior Ishmael had joined the a
rmy as soon as he’d come of age because he wasn’t an academic like his brother. Being in the army had opened his eyes to the realities and gruesomeness of life.
When Ishmael couldn’t talk Mustapha out of fighting, he joined him in battle, not for the cause of Islam, but to be Mustapha’s guardian. To his torment, Ishmael failed at this self-imposed duty.
On the battlefield, they fought back to back. A seasoned and exceptional fighter, Ishmael was able to pick up some of his brother’s slack. Ishmael’s skills weren’t enough to overshadow the short training Mustapha had undergone. During one of the battles, while Ishmael fought one man, another attacked his brother, plunging his sword into the right side of his chest.
Ishmael finished off the two men and knelt next to his brother who struggled for breath. Mustapha looked him in the eyes and spoke in their native tongue. “It has been during the past few horrific days that I realized my error. Because of my pride I could not tell you.” Mustapha swallowed with a grimace of pain, but continued speaking with an effort. “I should have listened to you, my brother. I am sorry.” He closed his eyes and ceased to breathe.
Ishmael’s vision blurred from his tears. The only reason for fighting this unholy war was to keep Mustapha alive and he’d failed. He no longer had any business on the battlefield. This war was not his and he had no need for it. He left the field, carrying Mustapha’s lifeless body, stopping only to defend himself as he struggled along. His family would be devastated. Being the only one who could deliver the news, he refused to allow them to lose two sons.
This had been Jasmine’s last thought before coming back to the present, soaked with sweat and the heft of sorrow overshadowing her reality.
“And in the second one you daydreamed about being a prison guard right?”
Jasmine nodded. “Once again as a man.”
“I wonder what Freud would say about you being a male in these daydreams. Is there something you want to tell me, Sis? Any confessions you want to make?” Carly teased.
“No, little girl, there isn’t.”
“Are you sure? No deep-lying secrets being kept in the closet?”
“I’m sure.”
“You haven’t dated a guy in about a year and a half. I was thinking perhaps you’d gone to play for the other side.”
“No, I’m still for the same team. Go heteros! Yeah! Whoo hoo!” Jasmine exclaimed while waving her hands like a cheerleader.
This got them laughing.
“What were you feeling as the prison guard?” Carly said, bringing them back to the daydreams.
“I possessed toughness and yet I had a compassionate side I never showed. I lived and worked according to the rules. No bending nor manipulating them, even for the betterment of the individual.”
Guilt had been the theme of the daydream, knowing she did the right thing, according to the rules, all while ignoring the needs of her fellow brethren. If the rules stated a prisoner should go without food for days on end, she would oblige and withhold food.
She ignored her frustrations and went with the flow of the system, instead of doing what she knew was right in her heart. The guilt had been overwhelming, but not enough for her to yield to it.
“What was the setting of this daydream?”
“It was during World War II.”
“Were you a Nazi prison guard?”
Jasmine bowed her head. “Yes.” She’d never told Carly this entire daydream either because it broke her heart. She knew it wasn’t real, but she had felt everything--the guilt, the horror, and the coldness within her as she followed orders instead of her conscience.
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes before Carly tried to console her. “You know it was only a daydream, right? Just a part of your imagination.”
“I know.” Jasmine brushed a tear off her cheek, remembering the desperation and extreme sorrow. “I behaved like a weak coward. I could’ve helped them in some way if I hadn’t adhered so strictly to the rules. If only I had done the right thing.”
Carly got up and wrapped an arm around Jasmine’s shoulders. “Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. It was all part of your imagination.”
“I didn’t tell you this, but I fell in love with one of the prisoners.”
“Oh.”
Jasmine stood and went to the window. The stars glimmered above. She’d lived a whole lifetime during that short daydream. “I knew I loved her when I first saw her step off the train.” Jasmine transported herself into the depths of the daydream. “My heart recognized her, but I knew I’d never have her. She was a Jew and I was not. She was a prisoner and I was not. I was horrified at my reaction to her and yet I couldn’t stop myself from loving her.
“I watched her when I thought she wasn’t aware, but it turned out she was always cognizant of me. She spoke to me one day, shy as a mouse, because it was forbidden. She asked me in halting German ‘Why do you watch me so much?’ I looked at her with shock, amazed that this prisoner, this creature of my heart had dared to speak to me.
“Her presence pulled at my soul and I could not contain my words. My heart spoke before my brain had engaged. ‘It is because I love you and it makes me suffer to know you are a prisoner here.’ She covered her mouth with her bony hand. I, too, was in a state of disbelief at my own revelation. I was a guard. It was forbidden for me to have conversations with prisoners, and yet I had broken the rules before I’d had the chance to realize it.”
Jasmine looked at Carly who’d scooched back on the bed to rest against the headboard. “When she raised her gaze to mine, her eyes were filled with love. ‘I have loved you since the first moment I saw you,’ she revealed. ‘My heart leapt with joy at its recognition of you. Even in this horrific captive state, I was filled with the knowledge that I loved you, and it gave me hope. I knew my destiny in coming to this place. It was because of you. To know your love.’
“I gazed at her, astounded and, upon hearing her words, my heart overflowed with happiness, bringing a smile to my lips. Who was I that such a beautiful woman should love me? And without another word, I did the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. I turned around and stumbled away. I got myself transferred to another area on the compound so I wouldn’t be able to see her. I didn’t want to watch her face become more skeletal as each day passed and she starved. I didn’t want to hear her pleading for help as the other prisoners did. I especially couldn’t bear to see her being led to the gas chamber if the time came. Even though I knew what would eventually become of her, I did nothing to help. My love was futile against my cowardice and my need to follow the rules. I knew her death would be my mine, too, but I did nothing to prevent it.”
Jasmine closed her eyes against the misery. Carly’s sniffle turned into a deep sob.
“It was just a daydream,” Jasmine said, trying to comfort her.
“But the way you tell the story, you convey the pain and misery as if you were there. It’s just so sad. Oh, the poor Jewish people. Why did they have to suffer so much? The inhumanity of what they went through. Why, Jas?”
Carly looked at Jasmine, eyes wide and pleading, as if expecting her to have an answer to the question. Jasmine had no answer for this travesty or any other that had occurred in history or which continued to this day, so she said nothing.
“What was your name?” Carly asked.
Jasmine’s head snapped up in surprise. “Why do ask?”
“In the other daydream, the one where you were a warrior you said your name was Ishmael.”
“Joseph Heydrich.”
“And hers?”
“I never knew it. I saw her once again after our encounter. The day they obtained freedom. Germany had been defeated and the Jews were let go. On the release day, I saw her briefly. She looked gaunt and miserable. She must’ve felt my gaze because she raised her head and stared at me. Keeping it held high, she walked away.”
Carly sighed. “These daydreams are really intense. I can see why they stress you.”
***
> Jasmine didn’t spend any more time alone with Sean during the weekend, but remained aware of him.
No more deep conversations were shared between them but, every once in a while, they would catch the other staring and their gazes would hold.
Those times could only be described as magical or celestial, or some other unbelievable word that existed among people who played Dungeons and Dragons. Before meeting him, Jasmine hadn’t believed in anything mystical, but she was fast becoming a firm believer. The weekend ended too soon, just like always, and, at four in the morning on Monday, they trooped to their cars and headed into the real world with Grandma waving them off, showing all her teeth.
Chapter 5
Jasmine anticipated another cozy Friday night on her couch, watching television and drinking marshmallow-loaded cocoa. She’d been restless ever since Triple G a month ago and placed part of the blame on the broad shoulders of a light-skinned, too-handsome-for-his-own-good man she couldn’t stop thinking about. She’d even gone so far as to ask Ed how Sean was doing a couple of times. Her brother’s grumbled “Fine” was the only answer she received.
Carly’s fall down the cliff still weighed on Jasmine’s mind. Could it have been an accident? Or something more? Carly had been sure she’d been pushed, but no evidence of anyone being around had been found.
When the phone rang, Jasmine hesitated before picking it up when she didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID. For the past few weeks, she’d had more than her share of deep breathers on the other line. But those numbers had read restricted so she took a chance and answered. “Hello?”
“Uh, hi,” came this deep, rich voice over the line, sending a zing of deliciousness through her body. “This is Sean. Sean Taylor. Ed’s friend. I crashed your Triple G last month.”
“Yeah, Sean. I remember. How are you?” she said, as if she hadn’t been stalking him in her mind for the past month.
