by Alan Spencer
Afraid again. Always so afraid. So cold too. She shivered even though the recent gust of wind was warm. It was unseasonably warm year round. The thoughts within Aimee kept her body icy. This was where she had to seek forgiveness. It's all she wanted.
Forgiveness.
Gazing into the ocean, she thought: I haven't forgotten you. I never will. I'll mourn you for however long it takes to bring you back. Leaving you here is my biggest regret.
Aimee wept, her eyes watching those waters again, knowing what she left behind many years ago was still out there and may one day return.
Mark decided the playful energy exuding from the beach wasn't for him anymore. Things were too weird. Aimee's words voided out anything positive. Something dark was going on in this place. The only thing Mark could do was leave the beach, pick a path in the woods, and hope to find another person who would talk to him and maybe tell him the truth about Meadow Woods.
Scattered about were wooden shacks, the kind disguised by local brush and camouflage tarps for hunters to sit and wait for bucks and turkeys and game to walk into their crosshairs. It was in one of these shacks that he took a rest, having walked at least two miles. He was covered in sticky sweat and craving a drink of water. Inside, he located a rickety twin size cot with a thin mattress, a 12 gauge shotgun propped against the wall, and a package of American Colt cigarettes. Next to the pack was a match book. Mark didn't smoke.
When Mark rested on the mattress, he soon closed his eyes and fell asleep. He woke much later to discover a man clutching a 12 gauge. The man was sitting in a chair waiting for Mark to come out of his sleep. Mark was startled until he vaguely recognized the man in hunting gear and green and black face paint smeared on his face. He was about to apologize for sleeping in the man's shack when the man shook his pack of cigarettes, and the pack became full again. Right before his eyes. Unbelievable. Like a magic trick.
"What in hell?" Mark's breath was stolen. "Okay, this place has got something more than meets the eye going on, and I wish someone would spell it out for me."
"Do you remember me?" The man searched his pockets for a lighter. Once he found it, he enjoyed a pull from his "new" pack of cigarettes. "Everybody called me Jackson back then. I played guard on the football team. Then I graduated high school. I worked construction. I became a fucking nobody. That's my life story. Write a short book about it."
Mark wasn't sure what to say to that.
Jackson had bad eyebrow dandruff. His long hair was mussed up, giving him a caveman appearance. He was a hundred pounds overweight and always out of breath. He stank of armpits and cigarettes, and now that he was awaken and no longer fatigued, Mark could smell semen. The tang was coming off the mattress. He put two and two together, catching the edges of nudie magazines poorly hidden underneath the cot.
"I keep to myself," Jackson said, "except when I talk to Aimee. She's a broken soul beyond repair. Just like me. We fuck out in the woods when she feels like it. Sometimes on the mattress you're sitting on. We don't embrace this place like the others in town do. We stay out of their way, and they stay out of ours. You just got here, Mark, and you're already looking like you never had cancer."
"How do you know I had cancer, or that I'm better?"
"Everybody here had cancer. It's why we're here. It's why we're the way we are."
"If everybody who had cancer were here in Meadow Woods, there'd be millions crowding this town, and that's clearly not the case." Mark got up, finding himself not enjoying Jackson's company. "You're like everybody else. You spout a bunch of bullshit. I want answers. I'm wasting my time talking to you."
Jackson wasn't listening to Mark.
"I agree with Aimee. What she told you earlier, I mean." Jackson stripped out of his gear down to his underwear. The stink of him was much stronger now. "When we do die, it'll be far worse than it would've been before. One day, we'll grow bored of biding our time. Fun can only be fun for so long before it all grows tiresome. But what do you know about it, Mark Tripdick? You just got here. We'll talk in a year and see how you feel then. Now get the hell out and leave me be. The welcome wagon just left. Fucking go away and leave me alone."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
There was another hour of solid daylight before night fell. Mark walked on, sure he would catch a break in the woods, and he did. In the near distance appeared a looming three story box. What used to be a battery factory. On assembly lines, car batteries for Ford were created and shipped out by the thousands. And now the building of brick and spray-painted black windows was dormant. Chains secured the doors. Strange how not a single window was busted out. Around the perimeter of the property was reams of barbed wire, the barbs a gnarled shape designed to stick into skin and not unlatch without taking a chunk of meat first. He remembered chucking rocks at the place when it closed down in '79, but now, he thought again, not a single window was busted.
So strange.
Without thinking, Mark plucked a stone from the path and was about to pitch it at the building when a woman grabbed his arm and pried the rock from his hand. "Ah-ah-ah. We don't deface property."
"Say what?"
Mark sounded so dumbfounded that the woman's stern face lightened up. The woman was gorgeous with flowing black hair that extended half-way down her back. Her eyes were the blue of an ocean. Pale skin, shapely hips, a beauty mole on her left cheek, plump cleavage that jutted out of her v-neck shirt, and the nipples as fat as cookies (he could easily trace them through the thin mauve cloth), those were the first few traits he noticed. There were more features, but as a man, those were the ones he chose to enjoy the most.
Mark was staring at Elizabeth's best friend from high school. Her name was Reyna Hawkins. Reyna recognized him too.
"Mark Tripdick. We meet again."
Reyna brought him in close for a hug. In his ear, she whispered, "God, it's nice to see you. By the look on your face, you seem a little confused. Let me reassure you, you're where you should be. All is well."
After she broke off the hug, Mark stepped on a pad of paper and a pencil. He apologized, gathering the ink pen and pad from the ground and handing it over to her. "Oh, I'm sorry."
Reyna accepted her items. "No harm done. I was just writing my thoughts down. Poems. Sometimes stories. I paint out here too. Whatever I conjure up in my head."
"I wonder what other information you're going to toss at me about Meadow Woods and its powers. Like everybody else has in this town. Since moment I arrived here, it's been one weird thing after the next. I bumped into Aimee in the woods. Oh, and a guy named Jackson. Real creepy dude. Looney Tunes, both of them."
"We each have our own opinionsof our situation here. Some make the best of it, and some fall victim to their doubts. Being alive, standing here with you, putting thoughts on my paper, enjoying the nice air, how could I dislike anything? Jackson and Aimee are ungrateful, but they're one of us. They've committed. They're just not happy as the rest of us. They refuse to be happy."
"You said they're committed. There's that word again. I have no idea what it means."
"You will by the end of the week. We were all like you at first. Your reaction is normal and expected. Don't worry, is my best advice. All is well. Have fun."
Mark couldn't help but mention his wife. "I wish Elizabeth could be here with us. She'd make me feel better. She always could. Even when she was sick, she knew how to deal with me."
Reyna's soft face features went stiff. She started walking on a new path that looped beyond the old battery factory. Mark pursued her. He wasn't done talking to her.
He was shouting after her, "I'm so confused. Why does everybody get so mad when I mention Elizabeth?"
Reyna increased her pace. She was almost out of sight. She said this before she disappeared, "We must forget the dead to live life as we do now. Once you commit, there is no death."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"I miss you, Elizabeth."
It was sanest, most honest thing he could say about how he felt
while walking the woods alone again. Would Mark become an outcast like Aimee and Jackson?
The sky grew darker. His eyes adjusted to the black, yet it didn't lessen the lingering sense he was lost. A more honest statement which he shouted at the sky, "This place is fucked!"
Mark couldn't stop talking to himself. He was getting angrier as he kept spewing out words. "If I didn't wreck my van this shit wouldn't be happening. Fucking Peyton wouldn't have conned me into driving to Meadow Woods with him. Fuck Meadow Woods. Fuck it in its tight little ass!"
A clod of earth slipped beneath his feet. He rocked forward, striking the hard ground face-first. His jaw took the blow. The jar to his head had him seeing a flash of white. Blinded by a surge of pain, Mark clamped his eyes shut. He squeezed his midsection, and before he knew it, he felt the urge to urinate. He unzipped himself and pissed without getting it all over himself. The rush of warmth was like squeezing out sharp tacks. He could feel his urinary tube swell and throb, all of him tensing up with every drop released. On his back, groaning in relief, the rife stench of dead fish surrounded him. Before he could rise to his feet and escape the awful smell, somebody walked out of the shadows and greeted him.
"I'd help you, Mark, but first, you've got to put your friend back into your pants."
Cassie was a shadowy profile in the dark. Then she was beside him, leading him on. She kept asking him if he was okay.
"I know when I pissed out my sickness, it was like fire out my urethra."
Mark wasn't sure what to say to that as he put his dick back in his pants.
After a short silence, Cassie said, "So you probably have a ton of questions for me now that you've had a day to yourself."
Mark checked his pants to be sure they weren't wet. "I'm not sure about all this eternal life bullshit I've been hearing. I mean, come on."
Cassie's eyes met his. "What makes you say it's eternal life we've obtained?"
"I'm pissing cancer out my dick. Everybody keeps talking about death as if it's a past tense concern. If I commit. If I hear that fucking word one more time, maybe I won't do it. Whatever that means."
Cassie hefted Mark up to his feet so they were facing one another. Each of her hands were locked over his arms. Clutching him. "Don't ever say that. I want you here with me. Promise me when the time comes, you won't say that. You will commit. I want you here, Mark. I know this is forward. I love you. The timing might not be right to say that, but I do. I made a mistake marrying," she paused, having difficulty saying, "Duke."
"Duke's not here, right?"
"No, he's not. Thank God he's not. He doesn't deserve it. People who don't deserve it don't make it here. I won't let you turn down their offer, Mark. I'll make you happy. Give me the chance, Mark. I can make you so happy."
Mark stammered at first. It was so unbelievable what she was telling him!
"I wouldn't know what I was turning down. I would think this was a sick joke, but then I see an ocean in Meadow Woods, something clearly impossible. Everybody is so healthy looking. Even me, I'm looking better, and I haven't done a damn thing. This is too good to be true. It makes me wonder what I have to do to keep this gift. That's what scares me."
He read into Cassie's face that she was hoping he'd be thrilled to see her, swept up by her charms, and excited that they could be together forever. She was in a place steps ahead of him, and he had to catch up. His father once said if something was too good to be true, there was a debt on its way, and to be in debt to someone who writes all the rules of a bargain was not a good position to be in at all.
"It's been a thrill seeing you and Peyton again, don't get me wrong, Cassie. Please believe me when I say that. I'm living the strangest phase of my life, and that's saying a lot considering I lost my father and my wife before I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer."
She tensed up again, hearing him mention the deaths of people she once knew. Mark kept talking anyway. "I've been walking around town like a lost puppy dog trying to piece this together. I'm lucky I haven't turned into those people in the woods and completely lost it. Who knows, maybe I will."
"You won't," Cassie said softly. "But I can't make you choose anything. I can only sweeten the deal and try to convince you I'm right. That you and me are right together."
Mark removed her hands from his arms and hugged her close. He didn't let her go until she stopped shaking. Then he broke off the hug, locked arms with her, and said, "Take me back to town. Show me what you need to show me. I promise I'll listen to what you have to tell me, okay?"
Cassie agreed. She didn't say much after that moment. They walked back to town. In the darkness, she mouthed, "I'll make you forget about Elizabeth, and everything else you're leaving behind."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Walking the woods for a long time, they finally came upon a cleared out spot where the brush was removed. A tent for two appeared. Cassie motioned for him to come inside with an enticing smile. "Why don't you come in and lay with me? The town's a bit too far out of the way to walk tonight."
Mark didn't take another step. "I don't know about this, Cassie."
"What do you mean? I want to rest, so why don't you rest with me? I stay out here sometimes, and I've kept the tent up. I'm not lying. I'm not trying to pull any funny shit."
Mark had been patient about the way Cassie felt about him, letting her speak her feelings, but now her seduction was a bit too much. She expected him to fall for her just because she offered. It wasn't enough for him. Call him an asshole. Call him stupid.
Cassie came at him, seizing the collar of his shirt, and kissing him along his neck. Her lips were moist and heavy.
"I know you had feelings for me when we were kids. It can be like that again. I've regret the choices I made since then, so let's follow our feelings like we should've since from the beginning. It's okay if you're not sure about your feelings. We're two adults having fun. I understand that you don't love me yet. That's okay. In time. In good time you will love me."
Cassie reached up into his shirt and playfully raked her nails down his belly. "I'll make you feel good. That's all it has to be. Two people feeling good."
Mark couldn't let her keep this up despite how good it felt being touched by a woman.
"Stop it, Cassie." Then instead of shouting at her, he lost it. He started to weep. "This is too much. I'm dying, Cassie. I'm supposed to die. I already lost Elizabeth. I watched her die. The person I loved, I watched her suffer in a fucking hospital bed and wither. Then I was to be next, and now I'm here, and everybody's healthy. Maybe I'm a idiot, but I'm questioning it. It can't be as simple as it appears to be. What I don't know scares me."
"No tricks," Cassie insisted. "I promise. I promise everything is good here."
"I need more time to take this situation in." He bolted from the scene, maneuvering through the trees in the dark. "I'm sorry, Cassie. It's just too soon...too soon with everything else that's going on."
Cassie kept calling after him, begging him to return, but he wouldn't hear it. Mark kept advancing in the dark hoping he would find a break in the woods.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Peyton was standing over him. "Oh man, you do not look comfortable at all."
Mark was sleeping on the ground with his back up against a tree.
"I'm not comfortable." Mark opened his eyes to the bright morning sun. "Wait, how did you find me? These woods go on and on. I got lost. This place is a maze."
"Cassie pointed me in the right direction, and here you are."
"Why didn't she come looking for me herself?"
"She's embarrassed. Last night, she told me she was moving too fast. She's loved you for years, remember that. Maybe as a memory in the back of her head that kept coming back and growing bigger and bigger, but she's had you in her heart for a long time. She's ready, and she forgot you may not be ready. Near death experiences have a way of bringing clarity to things really fast."
"It sounds like something you'd read in one of those cheesy book
s housewives read. Who says I still have feelings like that for her? People change when they're separated that long. We were in high school. I could be a jerk now for all she could know."
Peyton helped him up off the ground. "In time, we'll see the truth for what it is."
Mark's back popped. His legs were coursing with pins and needles. "Oh Jesus, I'm sore."
"You wanna have fun today? No bullshit."
Mark rolled his neck and stretched his arms out to the sky.
"Fun? Why not? I'm stuck here. I have no choice, or I die like Richie. So what'd you have in mind, old pal?"
Town was a half hour's walk from their position. Mark wouldn't have found it in the darkness, though it was frustrating knowing he was so close to a bed and a hot shower. He wouldn't have slept in the woods.
The Fast Stop gas station removed him from those concerns. They stood side-by-side like two cowboys about to enter a shoot out.
"How much merchandise do you think we lifted from this place?" Mark asked Peyton with a mischievous smile. "I'm surprised they didn't go out of business."
"It'll never go out of business now."
Peyton advanced, and Mark followed. Entering the glass doors, a jet of air conditioning blasted them. The front was unmanned. Nobody was in the aisles. Peyton helped himself to a plastic bag by reaching over the cashier's station. He piled in beef jerky, Corn Nuts, Doritos, Fritos, eleven different candy bars, four bottles of Coke, a bundle of Pixie Sticks, and six different nudie magazines."
"You're not exactly being a very sneaky kleptomaniac. You used to be more of a magician about it. Have you lost your artistry?"
"Nobody's here, man. Take what you want. It's not stealing. Nobody cares. It stocks itself and replenishes itself."
"Why wouldn't anybody be here? How does it replenish itself? Don't you find that strange? You're fucking with me, man. Aren't you?"
