by S. L. Naeole
“I will never love you, I will never want you, I will never forgive you. If you kill my heart, there will be nothing left for you.”
“That’s a risk I’m going to take, Grace.”
DOUBT IN CIRCLES
My stomach gurgled for the thirteenth time. I knew it was the thirteenth because counting each one helped to keep me from focusing on the quiet. It’s scary, what complete darkness and silence can do to a mind. You start to imagine things, hear things that aren’t really there. You even start to feel things that aren’t there.
So when my stomach growled that first time, I giggled. It was such a welcomed sound. I put my hands over my waist to feel it the next time it came. When it did, I hugged it to myself. It was sound and motion that were real. I was alone—I’d been alone for a while judging by how many times I’d replayed Rocky Horror in my head—and my body was finally starting to recognize this.
So of course, when you’re hungry and you haven’t eaten in a while and you don’t have any options available, your mind begins to run through a virtual buffet of food. Hamburgers, hams, salads, pasta… I began to picture different pies and cakes…
“Ugh, I’d kill for some of Dad’s egg-in-a-hole,” I groaned.
I could smell the butter, hear the sizzle of eggs. My stomach grumbled again.
“I’d eat them with a full plate of bacon,” I said out loud. “And a glass of iced tea. Oh God, a pitcher of it.” My mouth was dry. I didn’t realize how dry it was until the image of a frosty glass of tea made me cough.
“Ugh. I’d drink coffee right now if it I had to.”
I stood up and began probably my fourth lap around the small room. I was dizzy, but that wasn’t anything new. The room had no corners, and the floor dipped a little at one end. There was no door, but then again I didn’t expect there to be. The walls were soft, made of dirt, and they crumbled whenever my nails dug in a little too deeply.
“Like chocolate cake,” I mumbled.
I stopped walking and my shoulders sank. “Ugh…I’m starting to act like Graham.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and started walking again. I needed to think about something other than food.
“God, why is this happening? I don’t care about what happens to me. I don’t. But Dad’s probably never going to let me out of the house again after this, and Robert…”
I broke down, stumbling over my own feet and hitting the dirt hard.
Everything seemed to jiggle loose inside of me. Every thought I’d ever had about him, every feeling, every wish and hope scattered like glitter in front of me. And even blind, I could see them. Every sparkle that I’d seen in his eyes, every bright spot he added to my life that I thought would always be dark. Robert had told me once that I had completed him.
I always thought that was sweet, but wrong, because I couldn’t complete him when he made up all of me. But I knew that I was wrong. I closed my eyes and imagined him there, beside me.
“You know you and I are two halves of the same whole,” he’d say to me while stroking my face with his thumb. He would know how comforting that would make me feel and then he’d kiss my forehead, and tell me that he loved me.
“I love you,” I’d say back to him, and he’d smile and say that he knew that.
He must be going crazy with worry. His head must be filled with so many dark images. He’s seen the worst in people—his imagination wouldn’t give him a break.
“Ugh, even if Robert’s okay, I’m still gonna kill you, Lem,” I hissed, hitting the dirt with my fist. “He’s never done anything to you. He’s never done anything to anyone.”
“Whoa.” My fist had sunk into the ground several inches. It was like I’d punched jelly instead of dirt.
I pulled my hand out and frowned at the gritty feeling against my skin. “Great. I’m gonna look like a catfish when this is all over.”
Pushing myself back, I sat against the wall again and tried to focus on something other than food and Robert. I needed to think.
Lem admitted to being Sam’s partner. I knew that already. But it didn’t…mesh. Sam was pleased with his partner’s work, but when Lem’s name was mentioned, he seemed…upset. He said the plan had changed. Of course it changed—I wasn’t supposed to die anymore.
But Sam wouldn’t have gone along willingly with that. Not unless he feared what disagreement would mean. He loved hating me. He loved the idea of killing me; looking in his face when he believed that I was dying, I saw the only real joy he’d ever expressed.
If what Llehmai said was true, if he had been looking out for me for years, if he had been protecting me then that must have pissed Sam off. “There’s no way Sam would have agreed to work with Lem if he knew that.”
But why did Sam ask for his help? “Stupid, he wanted a way in to Erica.”
I slapped my forehead. “God, I’m so stupid. If Lem knew who I was then of course he did, too.” I continued to slap my forehead. “Stupid-stupid-stupid. He knew who I was the whole time. He just didn’t kill me until he knew I had a reason to live. He wanted to make it hurt. He knew…”
“Ugh!” I kicked the ground and screamed in frustration.
“He was waiting for me to meet Robert. He knew what was going to happen; he waited for it to happen! Every freaking thing about him is a lie! What’s next? He’s not really my brother?”
My head hurt, but I couldn’t stop. Sam wanted me dead; Isis wanted me dead. Hell, I’m pretty sure even Gabriel wants me dead. But Lem doesn’t. Unless… “Unless he wants me to starve to death,” I mumbled when my stomach let out another growl.
This back and forth was mind numbing. Lark said she knew Isis was Sam’s partner. She didn’t believe that it was Lem because of what she saw from Isis’ ring.
“Why didn’t I ask to see that ring?”
“See what ring?”
Lem’s voice, after hearing nothing but my own for hours, was like hearing a gunshot.
My head snapped back and hit the wall behind me. I yelped in pain and grabbed my head. “Where the hell have you been?” I grunted.
“I went to get you something to eat. Your mind and body isn’t ready to accept the fact that you’re an angel so you must eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I lied. And of course he knew I was lying. Even if he couldn’t sense it, even if he couldn’t hear the defiance in my voice, he knew by the almost thunderous rumble that erupted from within me. “Traitor,” I said to my belly.
He chuckled. “I know you like burgers so I got you two, plus an order of fries and one of those incredibly large cups of soda.”
The crinkle of the package and the smell of fried potatoes made my stomach turn over in anticipation.
“I’ll help you.”
“I don’t want your help.”
“Have you ever eaten blindly before?” His voice was almost mocking in its tone.
“I’m only blind because of you,” I reminded him.
“And that’s for your own good.”
“You mean that’s for your own good.”
He grabbed my hand and placed the side of the cup against it. “Drink something. You’re delirious.”
A part of me wanted to throw it at him—I gripped onto his hand and knew where exactly he was—but a bigger part of me wanted to drink every single last drop of soda in the cup and then suck on the ice cubes until my mouth was numb and my teeth hurt. I took the cup from him and through trial and error, found the straw sticking out of it.
“I know you like the strawberry one, but they only had cherry,” Lem said casually, as though we did this kind of thing all the time.
I took a deep gulp and sighed with satisfaction. “It’s wet. I don’t care if it tastes like celery.”
The sound of a wrapper being opened up and the smell of bread and meat and cheese were almost as good as Christmas. And when he held the burger to my mouth, and I took a bite, I moaned. “Oh God, that tastes like heaven.”
More crinkling, and a bag of fries was plac
ed in my lap. I sat there in silence—well, as silent as I could get, what with the completely inappropriate noises I was making while eating—and consumed the food that probably would have tasted like dirt if I hadn’t been so hungry. Every bite, every sip, every swallow made me appreciate how sometimes the simplest of things really were the greatest.
“That was…ladylike.”
I’d burped. No. No, what came out of me after the final guzzle of cherry-flavored soda was more like a cross between a frog’s croak and the bark of an overgrown donkey-dog hybrid.
“Excuse me,” I said before bursting out laughing.
It felt good to laugh, despite my company. And I didn’t care that I was the only one doing it. I didn’t care if he didn’t understand why I was laughing. I didn’t care that he was probably looking at me like I was losing my mind. I’d been wound up so tight, I felt like a spring.
As though my body knew how much I needed it, another rolling belch slipped out. “Oh, Graham would have been proud of that one,” I said between what breaths I could catch, my laughter almost uncontrollable now.
I held my stomach to prevent the pain I knew was coming from crippling me too much, and I fell over.
“You can find it in you to laugh despite being here with me?”
“I think I laugh in spite of being here with you,” I corrected between giggles. “If you keep quiet, I might be able to forget about you completely and pretend that my friends are here instead.”
“I do recall N’Uriel speaking to you about uncharitable moments.”
I lashed out with my feet before hurrying to stand, all sense of humor lost; now replaced with undeniable anger. “You listened to us? You spied on us?”
“I told you; I’ve been looking out for you, watching over you.”
I shook my head, my hands clenching into tight balls against my side. “No. You said you did that until Robert arrived. The watching out part stopped the minute you started listening to our private conversations.”
“Don’t you understand, Grace, that there really is no such thing as a private conversation? The truth will come out one way or the other; especially with our kind.”
“What are you talking about? I know that you guys can keep secrets; you wouldn’t have been able to have gotten away with half the stuff you pulled if you couldn’t. Robert didn’t know about my mom because all of you kept it from him.”
Lem laughed, the kind of Sam had made when he knew I was talking about something I didn’t know anything about. “I told you that the truth would come out one way or the other. It doesn’t mean that a secret can’t be kept for a time. You know this. You’ve seen the proof yourself.”
“I haven’t seen a damn thing. I haven’t seen a goddamn thing. People keep telling me things as if I already know what it means. It’s like you guys can’t see who I am. You only see my mom, or you dream you see her. Whatever it is, it’s not real, okay? I’m not my mother. I’ll never be her no matter what you want or think or do.”
“I see your mother in you, I won’t lie. It’s hard for anyone of us to look at you and not see her. But I’m telling you that you’ve seen the proof yourself. Not your mother, not a dream of your mother, but you.”
He grabbed my hand, fighting me to open my fist. “If you do not open your hand I might break your fingers,” he warned.
“Then break them! I don’t care! I’m not going to do anything you want, you creep!”
I struggled, but he was stronger than me no matter what I might have been. He opened my hand and placed something warm against my palm. “You now have every single secret I’ve ever had in the palm of your hand.”
I heard him move away, his feet intentionally dragging against the floor so that I knew he wasn’t near me anymore. I contemplated throwing whatever he had placed in my hand at him. I told myself that I didn’t care what it was, or what kind of secrets it held. He’d kidnapped me, hurt my friends, and was willing to do a lot more to get what he wanted. There was no reason to give him what he wanted.
I squeezed my hand around it, fumbling with my fingers until I felt one slip into it. I knew right away that it was a ring—his ring. “I don’t get it.”
“What don’t you get? Everything that I’ve ever kept from anyone since the moment I received my wings has been etched into that ring’s very make up.”
The large circle spun around on my finger easily, slightly heavy, thick, but nothing particularly special from what I could tell. It probably looked as plain as my mother’s ring, but aside from its sentimental value, there was nothing interesting about either of them.
“Great. So everything that proves you to be the jerk I know you are is on this ring.”
His voice grew unsteady. “You can’t see anything?”
“Of course I can’t see anything; I’m wearing my mother’s ring; I’m wearing Robert’s ring. I’ve never seen anything just by wearing them. Why would I see anything from yours? I’m not an angel—not enough of one, anyway.”
I held my hand out, wanting him to take the ring back. His hand pushed my fingers towards my palm and then my hand to my chest. “Keep it. One day you’ll know the truth about me.”
“I still don’t get it. What does giving me your ring have to do with anything?”
“When you and your teacher were attacked, a ring was found.”
I nodded. “Yeah, in my chest.”
“Do you know where it is now?”
I had to stop and think. And then I laughed. “My dad stole it.”
It was like I could hear the brakes on his brain being slammed. “Your dad stole the ring?”
“Yes. He took it from the police officer who had it. You were there.”
“Wow…”
“Yeah. I thought the exact same thing when he told me what he did.”
He grunted in response.
“Why do you care about that ring anyway?”
“Because it’s the only thing that will prove that I’m not the bad guy.”
How strange, to laugh the way I did when he said that. It sounded like something inside of me had snapped, and all the crazy that existed in me just came out all at once.
“You’re not the bad guy? You’re not the bad guy? If you’re not the bad guy then why the hell am I stuck in an oversized grave?” I shouted. “If you’re not the bad guy, then why did you help your psychotic son try to kill me?”
This time he shouted back. “I didn’t try to help him kill you. I tried to stop him—”
“How?”
He stopped. And then his voice grew soft. “By making him see you as someone to desire.”
A ripple of disgust ran through me. “I knew it was you. I knew it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You were there, the whole time—you saw what he did, you knew what he was going to do—and you didn’t do anything to help.”
“I told you, I tried to stop him-”
I threw the ring in the direction of his voice and hissed. “You tried to protect yourself and your secrets. Well I don’t want to know any of them. You watched your son attack me and then you made him…ugh, you made him do things that I can’t even…I hate you, Llehmai. I hate you. You and my mother deserved each other and I don’t know why the hell she never realized that.”
“Even in her most fiery of moments, Avi never once told me she hated me.”
“I don’t care.”
“She was very conservative with her affection towards me.”
“I said I don’t care.”
“The more that I think about it, the more I realize that perhaps the reason for that was because she never felt anything for me at all.”
“For the last goddamn time, I-don’t-care!”
“But you do. You care. You wouldn’t be able to hate me if you didn’t. Your mother was indifferent to me. She was indifferent to most of us thanks to millennia of killing for us. But you aren’t. You’re incapable of being indifferent. You even feel remorse for Samael.”
Ugh. I hated him. I hated him for his plans, for his thoughts, for what he’s done.
But mostly I hated him for being right.
Because he was right: I did feel remorse over Sam’s death. Everyone who died because of this didn’t have to. I know I wished it, I know I had hoped beyond all reason that Sam would die. But when he did it didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t give me the sense of relief that I had expected.
Instead I felt like I’d just taken Sam’s place.
Or maybe…
Maybe I’d just taken mine.
GRAVE IMPORTANCE
I smelled. It’s an unspoken rule that if you can smell your own funk, you stink pretty badly, and I was covering my nose at the odor that seeped out of me.
“How long have I been here?”
“Almost a week. Why?”
A week? Was that all it took to turn into a she-beast? “I need a bath.”
“I can clean you if you want.”
I shuddered. “I said I need a bath, not to be molested.”
“If it’s any consolation to you, I think you look just fine.”
“I don’t care how I look to you. I don’t care how I look period. I just smell…this whole place smells.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never had to take care of someone like you before.”
I tried to run my fingers through my hair to bring some kind of order to its chaos but they got stuck. “You call this being taken cared of? I’ve spent the past week living in a hole. I’m stuck on this side because I’ve used the other side as a toilet; I smell like a toilet. I’ve spent so much time talking to myself that I’m pretty sure I’m ready to be committed to some psychiatric hospital.”
“You’re being dramatic. I didn’t expect that.”
“Well maybe I’m being dramatic because I’m stuck. In. A. HOLE!”
