by S. M. Reine
“I’m looking for a ‘who,’” he said, carefully enunciating the words to make sure that he was communicating properly. “Grandmother. That’s the only name I have.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I told you, I’m not looking for a ‘what,’ but now that you ask…” Malcolm grinned. “I’ll start with a room warm enough that my testicles don’t try to climb into my stomach at night, and then we can go from there, if you’re feeling a little friendlier.”
Unsurprisingly, that seemed to be the wrong answer.
The women turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said. “I’m just waiting to pick up a friend. I need somewhere to stay. Is there someone called ‘Grandmother’ here?”
Her pinched expression told him that she was thinking of saying no, but when her mouth opened again, she said, “I’ll take you to her.”
V
Elise wasn’t sure when she came back to herself after the training with Adam. She thought that she might have gone unconscious at some point, only to have Him follow her into her dreams; the nightmares He exacted on her sleeping mind were just as awful and impossible to distinguish.
But she eventually woke up to find Adam gone and her body a ruin. He had skinned her. Now she was alone, bleeding onto the dry soil of the garden.
She didn’t bother trying to move. She remained immobile on the banks of Mnemosyne, listening to the water slosh, staring at the jagged black branches high above her in the fog.
Everything hurt.
A black tear burned a path down her battered cheek.
“There’s an easy way out of this,” Metaraon said, strolling to her side. “Surrender to Him. Walk through the door and allow yourself to become Eve. Then finish Him.”
Elise rolled onto her back. The dirt pricked at her exposed muscle.
She wanted to say, Just kill me. Please. But she wouldn’t beg—not even for that. So she said, “Go fuck yourself.”
He shrugged and stepped away. “In that case, He has asked me to tell you to consider yourself at home. He doesn’t want you to feel like a prisoner, and so you have free reign of the garden until His next visit.” With a sardonic smirk, he added, “Enjoy.”
Metaraon left her alone with the pain.
Mnemosyne splashed her legs. The bushes rustled around her.
Elise drifted.
She imagined herself in the apartment above Motion and Dance. It was easy to put together the memory of it after spending so much time in Adam’s perverse domestic fantasy; she clearly recalled the Ansel Adams prints, the tidy furniture, the rug underneath James’s coffee table.
The harder that she imagined it, the more clearly that she could see everything, as if she were really in the studio again. She searched around for happy memories in which she could shelter—something, anything, that had nothing to do with pain.
Elise remembered a rainy day when she had walked through the front door, hung up her jacket, and put her wrist sheaths in the pockets. The memory was vivid. She could actually smell the golden potatoes simmering on the stove.
Dinner was cooking.
“James?” she had called, and her lips formed the consonants in reality, huddled in a bloody mess in the garden.
The memory continued to become clearer: the radio quietly playing the news, a roast in the oven, a bottle of wine already picked out. Elise had worried at the time that James wasn’t in the kitchen; there was no way that he would leave dinner unattended. If he was gone, then he must have been attacked or kidnapped.
Or, as she had realized moments later, in hiding.
When Elise stepped past the laundry room, the doors had flung open and James had jumped her.
It was a game that they played hundreds of times. Even during their retirement, he had wanted to keep her senses sharp, ensuring that she would be on edge in the event of another attack. And, she thought now, maybe he had wanted an excuse to touch her.
In the memory she fought with James, exchanging blows. And the more she focused on the way the rain of fists had felt against her arms and shoulders, the less she felt the pain of being skinned, toothless, broken.
Elise had pinned him to the wall, hand in his throat, and she did the same in the memory.
It wasn’t James under her hand—not really. But the illusion was convincing. Elise could remember how it felt to have his pulse beating under her fingers. She remembered the thrill of adrenaline, the sweat on the back of her neck, the ache of being beaten. James never held back, and neither did she.
Within moments, the immense power of the garden had fully realized her memory, pulling the ghost of James into her false reality. Elise stared up at him, and he stared back at her with pale blue eyes, like those of a Husky. His hair hadn’t been quite as gray at the time, and he had his first sunburn of the spring tinting the bridge of his nose a shade of rosy pink.
Elise wondered what he would have done if she’d tried to kiss him.
“James,” she said, and he didn’t respond, because he wasn’t any more real than a photograph.
She drank in the sight of him, healthy and alive.
“What’s the point now?” Elise asked him. “Why should I even try to kill Him? Metaraon won’t let me escape if I succeed. And I can’t die. This is never going to end.”
He remained silent, smiling.
Elise imagined bowing her head to his chest. She felt his heart pounding under his shirt, as if he wasn’t on a stone slab underneath the Tree, cold and dead. When she wished that he would wrap his arms around her, he did, and they hugged for a long, peaceful moment.
“What are you doing?”
Adam’s presence bristled behind her.
Elise turned to see Him looming in the kitchen, desperately out of place in her memories of James. She realized with a cold wash of shock that forcing herself to remember the studio must have taken her there, and truly formed an image of James. Her memories had come alive, just as Adam’s did, at His will. The garden was malleable.
And He had just caught her fantasizing about James.
Elise tried to shield James with her body, even though she knew that there was no point. Adam had already seen. And there was no point in protecting a ghost that couldn’t even speak with her.
“You can’t take this from me,” she said.
Adam didn’t seem to agree.
He grew in His anger, swelling to fill the apartment with crackling fury and gray light. It burned away Elise’s illusion of her intact body, baring her skinned flesh again.
“I don’t know why you want to hurt me like this,” He said. “You don’t need anyone else.” His voice was calm, even as He continued to build in size.
He consumed her vision. The apartment faded around Him. James’s warm, ghostly presence vanished, and she slipped to her knees. Ichor dribbled out of her mouth, splattered on the floor.
Adam slammed His fist into her face.
She didn’t move out of the way in time—she was slow without her skin, distracted by pain. Elise spilled to the floor. She tried to crawl away.
He chased her, wrapping His fist in the hair at the back of her head, jerking her upright. His cheek burned beside hers. “I hate it when you make me treat you like this,” He said, soft as ever.
Adam shoved. Elise crashed to the table by the couch.
She grabbed wildly, wrapping her fingers around the first thing that her hands touched—the lamp from the table. Elise lifted it and swung. It glanced harmlessly off of Adam.
He struck her again. What few teeth had remained in her head splintered onto her tongue.
His weight bore down on her, pinning her to the floor. He burned against her raw flesh, agonizingly hot, and it was all she could do to keep breathing as He kneeled on her back with one hand forcing her head to the floor.
“Is the priest why you won’t go through the door?” He asked, lowering His lips to her ear.
Elise closed her eyes.
“Just kill me,” she said.
The heat of Adam’s attention faded a fraction as He turned it on the angel.
“Did she fall in love with someone else while she was on Earth?” Adam asked, accusation dripping from every word. He wasn’t as soft-spoken with Metaraon as He was with Elise. She wished that it had been the other way around. She preferred the honesty.
Metaraon’s response was prompt. “I believe so. Your bishop, in fact. The one meant to guide her back.”
Your bishop? The words swam through Elise’s mind, but she couldn’t make sense of them.
“Betrayal all around,” Adam said. “Is he dead?”
Metaraon took so long to reply that Elise decided to fill the silence. “Yes,” she said. “It doesn’t change anything.”
Adam shoved harder, mashing her cheekbone into the floor. The apartment was fraying as His thoughts wandered. She could see cobblestone out of the corner of her eye—a hint of the ethereal city.
“When you look at me, do you see him?” Adam whispered.
“Stop messing with me,” she said.
He shook her hair. “What do you see when you look at me?”
He doesn’t know, Elise realized with a dull jolt of shock. He had no idea that He appeared like James to her. That wasn’t part of the way He was trying to break her. It was a torture dredged up by her own mind.
Despair swelled in Elise, choking back a response.
“Look at how sad she is,” Adam said. His hand in her hair relaxed. He stroked her neck, her back, like she was a dog. “Why is she so sad?”
“Perhaps she’s broken,” Metaraon said.
Elise wanted to strangle him.
“How do I fix her?” Adam asked.
Metaraon paced in front of her, dragging his wings back and forth before her eyes. “Well,” he said, “I may have some ideas. I believe she can be repaired.”
“I’m not broken,” Elise said.
Adam just kept petting her, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Whatever it takes, my son,” He said. “Whatever it takes.”
Elise healed. Adam returned. The cycle repeated.
There were times that He took breaks from torturing Elise, and she was left unattended in the garden. He would vanish for hours on occasion, maybe even days. But Elise’s sense of time quickly grew too distorted to tell.
The moments that she escaped Adam’s attention were little more than blurry images. Sometimes she was in bed at James’s old apartment with breakfast at her side. At other times, she lost herself in a dark, overgrown wilderness, only to find herself in the gleaming emptiness of Araboth heartbeats later.
None of it really mattered, because she always ended up back there…with Him.
Eons passed.
Metaraon visited her one day while she was still shivering on the ground, skinless and bloodless and sucking in air that felt like razors. “You’re still not doing anything,” he said, exasperated.
Elise’s few remaining teeth chattered together. The rest were fragments of bone, which Adam had left in a pile as if to make a point. Her dry, cracked tongue hung heavy over her bottom lip.
“You’re better than this,” Metaraon said.
She wished that He would appear and force Metaraon to leave. Adam may have been insane, but He didn’t taunt her like that. She would take the pain over the indignity any day.
Her lack of response seemed to frustrate Metaraon.
“You were made for this place. Kill Him and be done with it!”
Elise pushed one hand away from her chest. It took immense physical effort, but she curled three of her fingers against her palm, leaving the middle finger exposed.
Metaraon kicked her.
It didn’t hurt any worse than the other things Adam had done, but that wasn’t saying much. White-hot agony flared in her midsection. Elise had been seriously injured enough times to know that she had probably broken most of her ribs, punctured her lungs, and was bleeding internally; none of these injuries were significant enough that she wouldn’t heal them eventually, if Adam didn’t repair them first.
“Pathetic,” Metaraon said. “This will be rectified shortly.”
Her vision was suddenly filled with swirling white feathers. His feet lifted from the ground in front of her. A shadow crossed over Elise, then disappeared, and she knew that Metaraon was gone.
Elise closed her eyes to focus on healing again. That way, she wouldn’t have to watch that door.
Whether she was in Motion and Dance, the gleaming city of Araboth, or the wild jungle, it was always waiting for her now.
So she focused on healing.
But then the world around her shifted, and the garden became Motion and Dance.
Adam was coming.
When the studio settled around her again, with parquet flooring under her broken body, she began to tremble.
Voices spoke from the other side of the wall.
“I have brought a visitor for your wife,” Metaraon said. It sounded like there was no concrete, no mirrors, no material between them at all. His voice was perfectly clear. “This will remedy what ails her and make the training far more effective.”
Even through the wall, without being able to see Him, Elise could tell that this news troubled Adam. “A visitor? What nature of visitor?”
“A friend.”
“She doesn’t need friends,” He said. “She has me.”
Metaraon lowered his voice. Elise suspected that she wasn’t meant to hear what they said. “You want her to be happy, don’t you?”
“There is nothing I would like more than that,” Adam said.
“Trust me. This will fix her.”
Reluctantly, He said, “Very well.”
The air shifted, and Adam appeared in the room.
She couldn’t help it. A low groan escaped her throat. It wasn’t a sound of protest, but one of resignation—like a death rattle escaping shriveled lungs.
“Hello to you, too,” He said. He almost sounded like James now, too. He spoke in a quiet, cultured voice, carefully articulated and immeasurably patient. It was so much worse, knowing that He wasn’t even doing it on purpose. “How do you feel this morning?”
Elise didn’t bother answering. She remained curled on her side, knees to her chest.
Adam sat beside her. He was wearing gray sweat pants, a black t-shirt, athletic shoes. She could feel Him watching her, even though she kept her eyes fixed on the mirrors behind Him. He still hadn’t thought to complete the illusion by allowing Himself to be reflected in them.
It gave Elise an unobstructed view of herself: auburn hair spilled over the parquet, freckled skin, exercise gear, perfectly healthy body. When she looked down, she saw that she had been healed.
Adam reached toward her. Elise flinched.
“Oh, come now,” He said.
“Get started so we can be done with it again.”
“Started with what?”
“Just do it,” she whispered. “I’m not going through your door.”
Gentle puzzlement radiated from Him. “I didn’t come to discuss the door again. I came to tell you that you have a visitor.”
“I don’t care.”
Adam laughed. It was a wonderful, delicious sound that made heat pool deep within her core. The laugh meant that pain wasn’t coming. He never thought that training her was funny; He took it with the gravity of a holy rite, as if sacrificing her to Himself each time. Elise ached for that laugh.
“Get up,” He said, taking her hands.
It didn’t occur to her to fight back. His skin was smooth, and His hands were strong; Adam supported her until she was on her feet.
This was a trick. It had to be.
Adam gestured toward the door, and it opened, baring gray light on the other side. Elise shielded her eyes.
There was a silhouette moving within the light—a clearly human shape, with wide hips and a long neck. It gained definition as it grew nearer. Finally, a
woman entered the room, peering cautiously around the door. She had blond hair bobbed at the chin, a plump face, brown eyes.
Elise’s breath caught in her throat.
No.
It was an illusion. It had to be.
But when the woman’s eyes fell on Elise, and her whole face brightened, it didn’t look like an illusion. Her gasp, her squeal of delight, the way she rushed to wrap Elise up in a bear hug—it didn’t feel like an illusion. She even smelled like peach body wash and lip gloss.
“Betty,” Elise said faintly.
PART THREE
Love Story
EDEN – 4009 BCE
From nothingness, came light.
The man opened his eyes to find a wall in front of him. The new light that he had discovered was on the other side of this semi-translucent surface, traced with a lacework of red veins.
He scrabbled at it with his nails, fighting to break through. A crack formed. He pushed harder.
His fist punched through.
The air on the other side was cool. A dry hand grasped his wrist hard, almost painfully so, as if afraid he might slip.
“I have you,” said a voice, muffled by the wall between them.
Those three words were the first voice that the man had ever heard, aside from the gentle whoosh of fluids racing through his body. The voice made his heart race. He wanted to know who was speaking to him.
He continued to push and punch and claw. A thumping from the other side told him that his new companion was doing the same, occasionally touching his hands as if to remind him that he wasn’t alone.
Finally the wall broke away, and he breathed for the first time.
The woman who had taken his hand continued to rip at the wall, allowing him to see her piece by piece. She had blue eyes, olive skin, and red-brown hair that tumbled over her shoulders in waves. Her cheeks glowed.
She was so beautiful.
“Hello,” she said, wiping fluid from his ears. “My name is Eve.”
“Eve,” he echoed.
What a beautiful name. The way it fell from his mouth was perfection—his lip catching on his teeth for the consonant, the musical note of the vowel. He loved even more the way that speaking it made her face brighten. Her eyebrows lifted, eyes widened, and cheeks dimpled.
