Chapter Sixteen
Rebirth
When Annabelle wakes, she opens her eyes and calls out my name. It feels oh so good to hear it, especially after the hours upon torturous hours of waiting. It also feels good to be needed, you know, to be the first thing on someone’s mind when they awaken. Yet perhaps I am giving myself too much credit; Annabelle really has no choice what with me being the only person around and her being blind. The first thing on her mind may have been me, except she probably doesn’t need me in the way I would like her to—no, she probably just wants to make sure I am here, probably much in the same way any waking blind person collecting their bearings would call anybody’s name when they wake. In other words, I am nothing special and her calling out my name does nothing to change that.
Shut up.
Brain has gone mushy, thoughts to mulch, coherence obliterated.
Over and over again, all night long: the dreamer? The undead? God? Love? Murderer? Allen Michael and Annabelle and Alice Michael? Mostly Allen Michael and Annabelle. A nice thick layer of resentment has built itself up within the fibers and tubing of my thoughts.
It’s weird being dead or transformed or whatever because I don’t sleep nor do I get hungry and since I can’t leave Annabelle here alone and I choose not to watch TV (I’m kind of scared of what I’ll see), I have nothing to do but stare and think and think and think about thinking. Needless to say I am glad Annabelle is awake.
“I’m here,” I anxiously respond to her call.
“Where?” She asks with that fear, you know the kind: the lilt verging on freaking out when she thinks I might fuck up and accidentally touch her or something. I don’t know why, but it annoys the fuck out of me. Chalk it up to thick, sick jealousy, chalk it up to frayed nerves, chalk it up to a night stuck in my head trying to make sense of the senseless, chalk it up to Allen Michael, chalk it up to whatever you want, just don’t let her do it again. Please.
“I’m right here.” I pat my safely distanced corner of the bed.
Sitting up and running her fingers through her hair, Annabelle can detect my irritation. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing. How was your night?” My voice twists unintentionally. I sound like a real asshole. Heck, I am an asshole—a jealous, combative asshole, greeting his adulterous girlfriend upon her return to reality.
“I am going to the bathroom, make sure you are clear.” Annabelle ignores my assholishness and hits me with the cold shoulder. She feels her way around the bed, I move clear, and she closes herself in the bathroom. Uncomfortable silence ensues.
Later in the car, the cold front continues. I thought we trusted each other. I thought we had become something special. Likely my attitude isn’t helping, but I can’t rightly turn it off. To make matters worse, Annabelle is holding a tightlipped grudge. She doesn’t like my jealous foolishness one bit and she offers no consoling words or assurances. She has only said enough to get us on the road and me up to speed with the plans as laid by Allen Michael.
Allen Michael: God, how I hate thy name.
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, California, is our final destination. Along the way we are to stop at Arizona airport, Ontario International Airport and LAX for a little last-minute damage control. After a quick sweep of the terminals, light brushing, no scenes or attention-garnering freak-outs, Mr. Allen Michael will greet us and keep us hidden away at the Hollywood Roosevelt until it is time for the “joining”—a concept that is still fuzzy at best, a concept that I am beginning to despise.
Armed with a handy map procured from the rental office (which, by the way, smells like hell, the office not the map, thanks to the uncooperative, dead clerk), we have zero problems finding the Arizona airport. Despite the wall between Annabelle and me, my successful navigation has picked up my mood. I suck at direction and this is truly a small victory if there ever was one. I am even smiling a little as we park the car. Annabelle must feel a vibe or something because I look over and she is smiling as well. Finally, the uncomfortable silence is broken.
“This is sooo stupid,” she blurts out.
“Isn’t it?” I nervously chuckle. Is it?
“Sooo very stupid. I’m sorry, Charles.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, I shouldn’t have said anything about Allen—”
What? I thought maybe she was going to apologize for acting cold. And Allen? She calls him Allen? Not Mr. Michael or Number Three or That Guy or something innocuous and sterile? Not something, I don’t know…formal?
“I shouldn’t have told you. I promised Allen I wouldn’t and he said it was for the best and as usual he was right, but we, you and I, have trust and an understanding and I thought we could handle it. We’re friends.”
“You’re calling him Allen now?” I sound defeated and pathetic.
Annabelle takes a deep breath and lays her head against the passenger-side window. Her eyes close. “Trust.”
Silence.
“Trust?” I goad.
She picks her head up, opens her eyes and un-stares out the window. “Trust is an important component in our relationship.” Long, drawn-out pause. I am about to goad yet again, but then she starts in: “I haven’t been telling you the truth. Last night when Allen’s show came on and I heard his voice I got so excited that I had to tell you, except as I had already told you, the instructions in my head made me promise not to tell you, but once I did it was too late, so I had to pretend like I knew less than I did.”
“You were lying to me?” My heart drops.
“Sort of. I already knew his name. I knew about his fame and his television show and I am a bit closer to him than I let on, but I told you the truth when I told you how I dream him. I told you the truth when I said you and I have something more substantial.”
“How close are you two?” Boiling. Black splotches blot intermittently, blocking out my vision. The air around us appears to wave with heat.
“Charles, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to deceive you, it’s just that I have been given implicit instructions not to talk about this; the success of our mission depends upon it. I should have never told you about Allen in the first place.”
“It’s a little late,” I practically scream. “How close are you two?” A few spindly tendrils dance from my stump.
“I’ve never had people care about me the way you two do. Not like a burden, an invalid, but like a mate, like someone you love. It makes me feel good. Intimacy lifts a weight, it makes me feel like I matter.” Slow tears stream from her eyes.
Redlining, more tendrils. “You were intimate with him!”
“No. No! But, in all honesty, I hope to be. He can touch me, Charles! He wants to touch me and sometimes I sicken myself with need. Sometimes I care about being held and cherished more than I care about our purpose! Sometimes I wish that I could love you back, but you are incapable, even though you think you love me, you are incapable, and I can’t give you anything, because you can’t give me anything back!”
I am this close to falling to pieces and striking out and whipping tendrils about the car until we are both nothing more than a jumble of pieces, ending this bullshit right here and now, when Annabelle begins to openly sob. I pull myself together and rest my forehead on the steering wheel. The tendrils recede.
Through tears: “Charles, I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t know how I feel and all of this human emotion crap shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter any longer, but it still aches through me just the same. I fight it, but it still chips away.”
“It’s okay.” My voice comes out tired and worn down. “It’s okay.”
“As much as I hate humanity and as much as I welcome the dreamer into my heart, I still care about you, I still care about Allen. There is a weird feeling inside, like you and I are meant to be together, and it’s frustrating because the feelings want so badly to be justified and normalized. But they aren’t normal, we didn’t meet to fall in love, we met to serve the dreamer even thou
gh sometimes I’m like fuck it, we can run away together, but then no, no, and I remember that I am not sexy, free, sighted Annabelle, I am fat, blind, trapped Annabelle and I can’t even touch you, and you can’t even touch me, and you’re not even alive and besides everything is going to end…”
It sounds like she is going to say something else, but instead she just cries. I want to wrap my arms around her and comfort her and I want to say nice things and I want to tell her that she can love me, she can give me her all and I will return it tenfold, but then I look at my stump, I look at the fat blind woman sobbing next to me, I look inside myself at my selfish heart, my incapable, defective capacity, and I keep quiet.
Annabelle’s sobs die away and the two of us sit in deafening silence for a good ten minutes.
“Annabelle?” I begin.
Sniffling. “Yes?”
“Everything is okay. You don’t have to worry about hurting me or hurting yourself or any of this messy emotional garbage because in a short while it won’t matter. We are here to do a job and it’s best that we keep our heads clear and focused so that we get it done. I’m sorry if I acted jealous and I am sorry if it is giving you the impression that I love you. I don’t. I am incapable. Hell, we don’t even know each other, so how can something like love be an issue? I mean, I guess you know me more than I know you, what with you dreaming me for years, but I barely know you and well, I don’t love people anyway, so there is no way I can be in love with you.”
I talk for a while longer, fortifying my lies, entrenching my falsehood and rendering it as believable as possible. It hurts because Annabelle is visibly shaken by my cold comments. I suppose she expected me to cry with her and plead for requitement. It is rather surprising, but I am finding out that underneath her “kill ’em all, humans are vile” attitude, she probably feels the same way about me that I feel about her. Despite the fact that we really, truly don’t know each other, there is a strange, strong, burgeoning love forming between us. I want more than anything to pursue it and push it and convince her to give us a chance, but something compels me to shut it down. Not for good, just for now. I don’t know why I am doing what I am doing, a part of me wants to go soft and suggest running away together, while a stronger, domineering part wants this. It wants revenge. It wants to watch her squirm. It wants to watch her fall helplessly in love with me. It wants her to feel what I felt (unrequited longing, aching). Mostly, I think I am still angry over her relationship with Allen Michael.
Yes, I am a bastard. And I feel this as I continue to hammer home the lie that I have absolutely no interest in her. However, I don’t want to be a complete bastard so I let it go and try to lighten things up. We’ll revisit this heavy emotional stuff another time.
“If anything, we are friends,” I say cheerfully. Annabelle still un-stares into the windshield. My trying to convince her that I do not love her, that her intuitions about me and perhaps herself were way off-base, has plastered a monotonous, listless expression upon her face. She looks neither sad nor happy. She looks numb.
“Annabelle?”
She nods her head and says, “Friends,” agreeably enough. The air between us feels empty; it feels like the complete antithesis of the vibe that flowed between us last night as we enthusiastically pledged our trust. We felt close, important to each other, mutually loved. Now, we feel like nothing.
“Annabelle?”
She nods her head again and after a slight delay says, “What?” It’s as if she is a million miles away.
“Are you okay?” I am kicking myself for being cruel. I should have capitalized on her subtle indications of love. This feels wrong.
Taking a deep breath she rolls her neck from one side to the other. Upon exhaling she says, “Are you ready?”
“Huh?” Ready for what?
“To kill us some filthy, motherfucking humans?” The spark has returned and she sounds like the Annabelle I am used to.
“Hell yes!” I blurt back.
Annabelle smiles big and tells me to touch them all. “Everyone, babies included, got it?”
I nod and then vocalize my agreement. “Let’s go,” I shout, jumping out of the car. This is kind of nice. Our relationship is pretty fucked up: I love her, she loves me, I have to pretend not to like her because I can’t touch her, she has to deny her feelings for me because she can’t touch me, we are both going to die shortly, and on and on and on, but when it comes to spreading the touch, we are on the same page, or at least she is all over the page, happy as hell to spread death, and I am happy that I am able to do something that makes her happy as hell.
“I can’t go.”
My rousing excitement dips. “What?”
“I can’t go. I can’t see and it’s too much trouble to guide me. I wanted to fall asleep and join you, but I slept too long last night.”
“Take some pills. I’ll wait for them to kick in.” It really makes all the difference if she is there. Like at the rest stop and that surrounded gas station. Touching felt right and manly and sexy and fun. When I am alone, it is scary and I feel kind of sad.
“I can’t. Not yet anyway. It’s too soon. I’ll join you at the next one, Ontario. Okay?”
I nod and say, “Okay.”
“Charles?” Annabelle turns her head and looks in my general direction. “I’m sorry about all that stuff, I just thought—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I cut in. “You want me to touch all of ’em, huh?”
Her face lights up. “All of them.”
“Your wish is my command, my lady,” I say in a noble, chivalrous voice. “King Arthur, human slayer, at your service.” I take a bow even though she can’t see it.
She giggles and I awkwardly shut the car door with my stump. Walking toward the terminal I decide to stop acting like an asshole and to start trying to love her, to start trying to make her love me. So what if this is ill fated, something is happening between us and it’s not just me, it’s her, I have confirmation of that now and I am a damn fool for trying to stop it. I am a damn fool for letting jealousy get the best of me.
Who cares about time?
Who cares about touch?
Love and loving is a state of mind, not a finite, diminishing thing, not a breakable, physical thing.
Who cares about Allen Michael? He’s a fucking panty-waste. I am the most important man in the world, not him. I am the destroyer, not him. Annabelle is mine, not his.
Human casualty number one, a teenager in a parka (despite the ridiculous Arizona heat), struts across the parking lot. As we near each other I raise my right hand— he doesn’t miss a beat, the poor fool, and slaps me a high-five. The moment our hands touch, my eyes turn inward. My heart has become a dead planet, a free-floating world of markers, a tombstone shell.
“Smooth suit, homie,” he says in passing.
“Thanks, man.” I smile back and continue toward the terminal. It is bursting with people of all colors, shapes and sizes.
Here we go.
I move through the crowded airport, head down, brushing against groupings of people. As I did in Vegas, I spiral out of my body and watch myself pressing through the throng. Death to electric light, it spreads hungry, buzzing throughout the terminal like killing lightning. Every human in the entire place lights up and I spin in ecstasy, shouting silent victory as I drop back into my head.
That familiar, morose emptiness turns my insides into a graveyard and the eye wall stretches out into what seems like infinity. The guilt generally creeps in about now, undercutting the adrenalized soul-sucking rush and bringing my mood down. Not this time. This time I am charged. This time I am validated. This time I am in love.
She loves me.
Proclamations in the car, delayed reaction, warmth settling in, creating a hovel of bliss in the pit of my stomach.
She loves me.
The eyes jitter and blink wet and try to impose their doom-and-gloom message of hate, but I am shielded, sheathed in layer upon sticky, gooey layer of adora
tion.
She loves me.
Fast-walk out of the terminal, threshing butterflies pulverizing my stomach with excitement, each footfall brings me closer.
She loves me.
And why did I do what I did? Why did I brush her off and kill her decrees? Spiteful idiot. She gave me an in and I destroyed it.
She loves me.
Fuck my chemistry. Fuck the monster inside me that forbids love. It is part of me, true, ingrained and growing since day one, but so what? Just because the dreamer wants me to hate doesn’t mean I have to. I am in control. Now that I know what I know, I would be an idiot not to rebel.
She loves me.
I am practically on fire with exhilaration by the time I reach the car. I thunk the door handle with my stump, curse myself, correct myself, and pull open the door with my shaky, nervous, nervous, nervous right hand.
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” I blurt out as I get in. “I…”
Annabelle rolls her head in my direction and looks through me with her clear eyes. They look sleepy.
“Wha?” she mumbles. A dribble of spittle dribbles from the left corner of her mouth.
“Annabelle?” She looks like she is out of it.
“Pills.”
“You took the sleeping pills?”
“Yeah. I’ll see you soon. Use the map and get us to Ontario, okay?”
She is too cute, all tired-eyed and loopy. “Okay,” I answer.
Annabelle smiles and closes her eyes.
Driving and thinking and at first all is well. I am still on my love kick and pleased as puke to have my girl, my girl, riding along with me. I am thrilled to be here, taking care of her, making sure no harm comes to her. I am more than her new love, I am her protector, I am her eyes. But then, I start to wonder where she is, you know, while she is dreaming, and why she isn’t here with me. I start to get angry and jealousy monsoons red in my head. Down and pissed, the eye wall returns and I get even more down. I start thinking about Eddie and the horrible possibility of child abuse, molestation, rape, dismemberment. I think about his overdeveloped noggin having to deal with it. That’s the worst. Not the physical degradation or the pain, or even a violent, sick death, but all the things your mind can do to you before and during all of that. Eddie’s intelligence mixed with his hyperactive children’s imagination, his jaded purity, would surely eat him alive long before death wiped away cognition.
I Will Rise Page 25
