by C L Walker
“Yes, it will. The wind is blowing the storm down the valley, it will be calmer the further we are from the creek.”
A few minutes later we stopped beneath a thick tree in the middle of a small clearing.
The rain was coming down so heavily it hurt my skin and I regretted not wearing more than a flimsy top especially since it had molded to my skin.
He took off his jacket that I had not seen him wear yet, he normally wore hoodies, but he had conveniently worn something waterproof on the exact day the sky decided to open and pour out its wrath upon us. He put it on the ground and sat down before he patted the spot next to him.
It was going to be a tight squeeze, but I took his offer and sat with my side flush against his anyway.
“What were you doing down by the creek?” I asked.
He seemed to be distracted as he looked through the trees and I thought maybe he wasn’t going to answer until he looked at me. “I needed to think.”
“But why here?” I sounded more than a little suspicious.
He rolled his eyes and glanced down at my chest before he looked away quickly.
It reminded me that I had been cut so I wiped away the blood.
“Because I was thinking about that night before I left and somehow my thoughts led me here.”
“Why were you thinking about it though? Are you going to tell someone?” I asked nervously.
“No, I am not going to tell anyone because it’s your damn business.”
“Good,” I mumbled. “But there is no need to be so mean about it.”
He kept fidgeting beside me, and I noticed that he had moved slightly away so that we were no longer touching, and I wished he hadn’t because I was cold.
“I can’t help it; you make my blood boil,” he admitted.
“That’s interesting because I didn’t do anything to you, and you have no reason to be angry with me.”
He grabbed my arm softly but forced me to turn towards him, and once we were face to face, I thought he would drop his hand, but his fingers remained and set my skin on fire.
“That’s the problem, you never do anything. You sit there and take it from everyone, including me.” He looked down at my chest again and his pupils dilated before they rose to my lips.
I froze in place, curious about the look in his eyes. “Micah?”
His eyes shot to mine as if I had surprised him. “Damn it, I can’t do this with you right now.”
Then just as quickly as he had grabbed me, he brushed me off and stood up as he swore under his breath. He looked down at me one more time, opened his mouth to speak but said nothing before he closed it once more and spun around and left the sanctuary of the tree.
I stood up as well and I stomped through the puddles angrily and picked up my pace so I could catch up with him and when I did, I chucked his jacket at the back of his head.
He caught it before it fell to the ground and said nothing about it.
“Did you ever stop to consider that I might have had a reason for never telling anyone about her?” I asked as I hopped over a small fallen tree.
He held a branch to the side and let me pass. “No, because there is no good reason for willingly being treated like that.”
Once I was through, he passed me again to climb up a small incline before he turned around and offered a hand. I took it because the forest floor was already muddy from the rain and I didn’t want to slip. His fingers felt wonderful against my cold hand and once he let go, I missed his warmth once more.
“That’s your opinion,” I said. “I might as well tell you how it is since you insist on acting like a know it all when you know nothing.”
“Have at it, princess.”
“She threatened to kill herself when I told my school counselor in fourth grade that she had hit me. She then told him I lied and threatened me so that I would confess to doing something I hadn’t.”
I wasn’t prepared when he stopped, so I ran into his back before I took a step back to allow him to turn around.
“Then you should have let her die,” he said firmly without an ounce of compassion in his voice.
“How can you say something like that?” I asked, and he took off again.
“She wouldn’t have done it anyways, and if she had–oh well–the worlds better off without human trash like her anyway.”
It was always so easy for those on the outside to tell you how you should have dealt with your issues but until you’ve lived it, you have no idea what you are talking about.
“She is my mother!”
He threw his hands up. “Yeah, and that means nothing to her so why should it mean anything to you?”
When he put it like that it seemed simple, but if people were so easy to drop, the world wouldn’t be swimming in a sea of broken hearts.
“That aside doing the right thing is what separates good from evil, that’s the difference between me and her. Had I let her die we would both be monsters and I refuse to be anything like her.”
He stopped again but that time he had a devious smirk on his face when he turned around. “We all have darkness in us, but no one said you had to let it consume you like she did. Besides protecting yourself wouldn’t make you a monster.”
“Here we go again with the blurry lines.”
He gave me a questioning look, but I didn’t offer him an explanation.
His eyes grew serious. “I’m just saying that bottling it up and doing what you think is right when it causes you constant pain, will only lead to something growing inside of you that you can’t control, and that’s when things get ugly. That’s when monsters are born.”
I drew my brows together in confusion as I listened closely to his words. “What?”
“Leaving her to her own fate isn’t the same thing, and when you do, when you leave and embrace the anger that’s in your own heart, you’ll realize that you are capable of doing so much worse to her than that. You have already sacrificed so much of yourself for someone who doesn’t deserve you.”
I shook my head as tears threatened to burst from my eyes. Nothing he had said was true. I refused to believe his words because there was no darkness in me, I wasn’t capable of doing anything other than what I had done.
Which is nothing.
“I see you, and I know what you are capable of,” he said with urgency in his voice. “Which is a hell of a lot more than cowering in the dark where you think you’re safe and a better person for having kept her alive.”
“You’re wrong! I can’t do anything!” I closed my eyes, clenched my fists by my sides and prepared to counter what he had said because he didn’t know a thing. He didn’t understand and he presumed to know too much about me.
“Embrace it, the darkness that is within you, the selfishness, and the reality that you are capable of doing more, not to hurt her but for yourself. I promise that you won’t regret it.” The way he said it made the idea sound enticing.
But I’m not selfish…and there is no darkness in me, right?
I opened my eyes to find that he was gone, and I hadn’t even heard him walk away.
I turned around in a circle and noticed for the first time that I could see the trailer park through the trees.
The rain still poured as I walked down the rest of the trail, and when I stepped inside the trailer park, I looked behind me once more, as I hoped that I might see him. But he wasn’t there.
There was only the sound of the rain as it hit the roofs of the trailers and his words that rang through my head.
I see you…
Eight
Micah
I didn’t know why I was so upset after I had left her because deep down, I had always known that she wasn’t okay. I saw the sadness reflected in her eyes every time I looked at her so nothing she said or did should have got to me as it had. But it bothered me that she refused to fight back, as it wasn’t in my nature to sit and take any kind of shit from anyone.
Humans were strange.
She
had been manipulated into staying with a piece of shit woman that had no right to the title of mother.
Her mom, Janey as I was told was her name, had a darkness around her that made my demon ass look as harmless as a kitten, because she had given herself over to sorrow and sin.
I couldn’t read anyone’s spiritual energy but when people were consumed by darkness, I could feel it. I felt the same thing from the man who had grabbed Skylar while she was working. There was something off about him and her mother and I was suspicious of a connection between the two.
Skylar was lucky her own spirt had withstood the temptation to crumble, she was too pure for the likes of her mom and that’s why I knew she still had it in her to rise above her situation.
If she came out alive anyway. That was the part that worried me, her mom seemed to be at a tipping point, but I couldn’t be sure because I didn’t know how she had been before.
After I watched Skylar go inside, I ran back through the woods to the back of the trailer, and I waited for her to lie down just so I knew she was going to bed unharmed.
I shouldn’t have, but I wanted to know how many times over the years her mother had physically and mentally abused her, and what the average conversation between them looked like so I could understand what she had endured.
I knew my curiosity was going to end up getting the best of me, but I couldn’t stop myself.
For what reason, I didn’t know, it’s not like it had anything to do with me but yet there I was concerned over her fake smiles and the nervous energy she hummed with. The only time she didn’t is when she was around me and she hummed with a different kind of energy, nervous still but it wasn’t in a bad way even if she hated it.
When her light turned on, I stepped back to make sure I was well hidden behind the tree as she leaned against her door and sighed.
I clutched my heart as I felt the weight of her anger and confusion, but it wasn’t directed at her mom as I would have expected, it was directed at me. It made me feel something that I was scared to name.
I often found myself purposely pushing her until she was angry, so her thoughts would spillover even though I said that I wouldn’t.
So much for keeping your distance, idiot.
Then there were times when I could feel exactly what she was feeling. It was probably the only time her feelings were known, and she didn’t even get to enjoy it because she didn’t know I was there sharing her burden.
Again, I hadn’t wanted to, but it seemed I was powerless to stop myself from getting involved.
She put a hand to her cheek and let it drop a second later and sighed.
I felt something stir inside me as I felt how flustered she was, she recalled the way I had looked at her under that tree and it made her heart pitter patter. She wasn’t sure what I had been thinking but she knew it made her feel warm in places she didn’t want to.
You’re not alone, babe, I don’t want to feel it either.
The hate and the lust, they were matched equally, and they were entirely too overwhelming for us both, especially with how sudden the feelings had come on.
She was on to something; she knew deep down how I had been looking at her, but I doubted that she would allow herself to accept it. I could have kissed her under that tree, I wanted to, but I wasn’t comfortable with the desire I was feeling so I didn’t dare give in to it.
I hadn’t been comfortable with anything I had done since I arrived, I was losing control.
Every time I so much as saw her my will took a step further away from me. It was worse when we touched because I became instantly struck by an urge to pull her into my arms and that pissed me off.
It didn’t make sense.
She pushed herself off the door and locked it before she reached down and when I realized she was going to pull her shirt off I looked away. I didn’t want to, but I wouldn’t invade her privacy like that, and I already knew well enough what she would look like underneath that soaking wet top.
Take a deep breath.
I gave her a minute and I looked back inside her window just as she was lowering herself below my line of sight. She was getting into bed and that was my cue to leave.
I didn’t know why I even gave a damn; she didn’t want me as a person, she wanted my body and that was it. So why did I have to worry about her, why did I want to protect her, and make her angry and take from her body all at the same time?
I hated being robbed of a choice and it felt like that was exactly what my feelings were doing, they were taking me on a wild ride even though my mind was clearly telling them to fuck off.
But I had to know what the hell was going on because none of it felt normal, and the sooner I solved the mystery the better. Clearly, I wasn’t capable of figuring anything out on my own and unfortunately the call I finally made to my mom the day before yielded no results either. She had suggested something so wild that I shut it down immediately and changed the subject.
After careful deliberation I decided that since I didn’t know what to do about Skylar, I had to see the one person I knew who could help me sort through whatever was happening between us.
I headed into the woods at a quick pace, the moon was high but covered by dark clouds and the forest was thick and blocked out what little light was given. Not that I needed it.
I could hear a bunny in the distance as it skittered over the earth and tried to avoid the mountain lion that had found its dinner. The river was also raging from the snow melting up the mountain. There was so much to listen to, but I wanted silence, so I blocked it all out.
I found a large tree whose trunk was wide enough for me to fit through and far enough in the woods that there was no way any humans would come across me.
I put my palm on the trunk and it split apart and created a small doorway, the air rushed inside beckoning me to enter. I Parted the liquid veil and stepped into a courtyard as the door closed behind me.
Inside the courtyard there was a fountain in the center with deep blue water spilling out of a lotus held above the head of a native woman who was perched on a rock above a basin. There were two stone benches with flowers carved into their legs that surrounded the fountain and rich green hedges that circled the courtyard to keep it separate from the darkness.
“Great Grandma?” I called once I was inside as I assumed she knew that I was coming.
When she didn’t answer I sat at a bench and waited and was rewarded for my patience twenty minutes later when she finally walked into the courtyard.
I watched her long gray hair sway in front of her weathered face as a breeze blew around us. Her emerald robes were the same color as the paint streaked down her cheeks and the jewel that rested in the middle of a braided tiara she wore across her forehead.
As she approached the bench she huffed at my attire, she hated modern clothing and she never failed to mention it every single time I visited her.
She hit my shoe with her staff and mumbled for me to scoot over so I made room for her and she sat down.
“Rotten boy,” she said, “stop wearing those ridiculous clothes here, it’s the realm where your ancestors reside so show your culture some respect.”
I laughed as I grabbed her hand in mine. “I don’t keep robes at Grandpa’s cabin.”
“Excuses. You have so many of them just like him,” she said. “How I ended up with a son and a great grandson who defy me at every turn I will never know.”
“He taught me well.”
She gave me a look. “Is it wise to praise his choices when they brought him to an early death?”
“He lived six hundred and fifty-four years, some would say he cheated death for far too long.”
She harrumphed loudly. “Humans would say so, but when your kind’s average life span is a thousand years, I’d say you are unwise for dying in your six hundred’s.”
“Grandma!” I laughed at her. “It’s not like he’s gone, he is here with you now.”
She had been salty ever since my Gran
dpa took one to the heart but with time, she would forgive him for being so careless.
“He should have been watching over his family instead of chasing women, that’s all he ever did and look where it has gotten him!”
I grabbed her hand in mine. “We’re doing fine, I promise.”
“Yes, I know but it is not the point.” She squeezed my hand and smiled. “I’m sorry, let’s not waste our time talking about that insolent child, what brings you here, my dear?”
“I have some questions,” I said, but I didn’t know where to begin.
She nodded her head to encourage me. “And I might have answers if you would only ask.”
I rubbed my hands together and readied myself. “Right. Okay, there is this girl.”
“This is a first.” She turned to look at me with eyes that could not see. “What of this girl? She better not be a witch because I won’t forgive you if you set foot beyond this courtyard in anything less than nine hundred years.”
“Yes, you would. You are the most forgiving woman I have ever met.” I laughed when she frowned. “Rest assured she is not a witch, and I won’t date any for fear of being tricked into an early death.”
“Good. Do continue.”
“I can hear her thoughts and feel her feelings.” I held my breath as I waited for her to respond because I feared she was going to say the same thing my mom had, but she merely nodded. “Only when she’s really mad, or sad, or uhm… thinking about me in a certain way.”
She quirked an eyebrow and cleared her throat. “You mean to say when her emotions are strong her thoughts spill over and you can hear them as if they are your own?”
I nodded my head.
“And?”
And I’m going insane.
I looked away, as I felt ashamed that I was letting a girl get to me. “I don’t know, I can’t control myself with her and I don’t like it.”
“I see.”
“What does it mean?” I turned back to her and stared into her white eyes.
She smiled before she put a finger to my heart. “Why are you asking me for answers that you already know inside?”
