Death of the Body

by Rick Chiantaretto

  I found Xia and Nicholas not sleeping, but looking rather bored, and perhaps a bit worried, in the break room. Xia was slouched over what looked like a terrible cup of coffee and Nicholas was sprawled across an old leather sofa Henric and I had rescued from the dumpster out back.

  “Okay, how the hell did we get back here?” I asked with more force than I intended, my emotional numbness starting to wear off.

  Xia and Nicholas’s faces both widened into a shocked expression.

  “Well at least you’re talking again!” Nicholas exclaimed. “What was up with you?”

  I had no idea what they were talking about but I wasn’t about to let them answer my question with another question. “I’m glad you guys are okay. What happened?”

  “It was pretty sweet,” Xia answered, now animated. “I think you meant to send us to the cave… the portal back to our world?” she grasped at what exactly to call the cave in the side of the mountain that we’d been trying to reach. I couldn’t think of a word or explanation that would help her. “Anyway, you ended up bringing the mountain to us!”

  “Oops,” I couldn’t help but beam with pride.

  “So we grabbed you and took you with us, but when we got back you were… different. You wouldn’t acknowledge us, wouldn’t answer our questions. All you kept saying was that you needed to get back to work.”

  Nicholas wasn’t smiling, but his expression was soft. “You’ve spent the last six hours back there cutting up meat. Xia and I couldn’t watch.” He made a face and mimicked vomiting.

  “Six hours?”

  “Without saying a word,” Xia whispered. “We were worried you were… broken or something.”

  “Asleep, more like it. At least that’s what it felt like,” I thought aloud.

  “You were sleep butchering?” Nicholas laughed. “You’ve got some mad skills.”

  “Speaking of mad butchering skills,” I interrupted, “why don’t you tell us what happened back at the dorms?”

  This was the kind of conversation that made Nicholas uncomfortable, but I figured if I sprang it on him he’d have less wiggle room. I was still surprised when he started talking without much protest.

  “I figured you’d ask eventually, so I’ve been trying to piece it all together. Even now it all feels like a bad dream that has pieces missing. But I guess the past day or so has been like that for all of us.”

  I nodded almost involuntarily.

  “Anyway, I went to the gym as usual, and there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. This guy kept smiling at me, working out next me, offering to spot,” Nicholas grinned at the memory. “When he was standing over me at the bench, I could see up his gym shorts—”

  “Do we really need those details?” I chuckled half-seriously.

  “I do!” Xia bellowed, her eyes wild with lust.

  Nicholas laughed and winked at her playfully, “Skank.”

  “Well, come on!” she chided, “We’ve been covered in blood, in Edmund’s imagination—not a very sexy place, by the way—fought off shadow demons and half-werewolf-dog-things, it’s about time we get to a little naked action.”

  We all laughed, and it felt good. I put an arm around Xia and gave her an affectionate squeeze.

  “Well, it was nice. Really nice,” Nicholas continued. “So I thought, why not see if he was interested in a bit of a more private show? He followed me to the steam room. We fooled around for a bit before he asked if we could go somewhere…”

  “And that’s when Xia and I came home and saw the tack.”

  “Yeah, what is it with that anyway? I still would have preferred a sock on the doorknob. I thought college boys like gloating to all your buddies about getting laid.”

  Nicholas smirked, “A tack for tact.”

  “Well, the noises we heard weren’t very tactful,” Xia grinned lasciviously. “Was he any good?”

  Nicholas’s eyes glazed over momentarily while he thought about it. “A-maze-ing. His body was—”

  “Again, details we don’t care about,” I interrupted. It wasn’t so much that I was getting uncomfortable (in fact, watching Xia’s reaction to the story was quite erotic). I just wanted to get to the important demon-possessed-me-and-made-me-kill-everyone stuff.

  “I totally care about all these details,” Xia spoke again, giving me a knowing look while her hand trailed slowly down her stomach. I couldn’t help but swallow whatever it was I was going to say next.

  Thankfully, Nicholas picked back up further down the story line, “Well, we were—” he looked at me uncomfortably.

  “Having sex,” I spoke for him.

  “Yeah, and then he looked at me. His eyes looked weird. I thought at first that it was just the light from the window, but then it felt like something was stabbing into the back of my head. It hurt so bad that I lost consciousness. I don’t remember much after that until a few minutes before you came in. It’s all sort of disconnected.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “It was like I was having a dream, and in the dream I was really hungry. Nothing I ate felt satisfying. There was this girl down the hall, and I’ve never felt that way about a girl before. She looked so amazing… but the lust I had for her wasn’t sexual, it was… predatory.”

  Nicholas looked like he was going to be sick, like he hoped that he had said enough, but we waited and he eventually regained his composure.

  “I think I ate her,” he said, “and the jock down the hall, and the chess club president, and the head cheerleader… well… technically the cheerleader was being eaten by the jock down the hall first, you know? They were together together. Anyway, I ate ate them.

  “And then I went back to the room, and people kept coming. I couldn’t eat anymore because I was so full, but their blood was so warm.”

  “What did you do with the bodies?”

  “I don’t know,” Nicholas was crying now. “I think he took them.”

  “Who?”

  “The demon. I don’t know his name. But the worst part was that he was looking for something. He wanted everyone dead so he could collect their souls. I remember him thinking that. It wasn’t a hunger for flesh, blood, or murder that he had. It was a hunger for souls. He said with them he could do anything he wanted.”

  “And what did he want?” I asked cautiously.

  Nicholas gave me a look of compassion and horror, one that communicated everything he needed to say even before he said it. “He kept repeating a name. Your name, Edmund.”

  Nineteen

  My eyes fluttered open just as Nicholas pulled a tight red polo over his broad shoulders. The orange light in the room looked florescent as it filtered through a high concentration of dust. Cheap motels always made me worry. I had to wiggle my nose a few times before I felt like I could breathe again after sleeping on a pillow I was sure played host to a New York-sized colony of dust mites. At least the sheets were crisp. I didn’t dare move too much since Xia was comfortable in the nook at my bare shoulder. My arm tingled and felt a bit clammy, but I hadn’t ever seen the rose color on Xia’s cheeks that appeared only when she slept. Even in the orange light it was so beautiful a color that I dared not wake her for fear it would fade.

  Nicholas had turned on the TV, but had it muted with captions. The news was currently scrolling text about twenty-nine students who had mysteriously gone missing from the dorms at UCSD. There was speculation that the disappearances were the result of some psych student’s senior thesis, but it was hard to read the scrolling black-and-white text from the angle at which I was viewing the screen.

  Xia stirred and pulled herself in even closer, her hand landing squarely on my groin. Nicholas stifled a chuckle as my eyes widened and I flushed.

  He flashed me a toothy grin, taking a long moment to give me one of his “knowing” stare-downs. I smirked and stuck my tongue out, childish, but effective.

  He winked at me and mimicked holding a phone to his ear while mouthing the word “mom” before he silently slipped out
of the room into the bright morning.

  I couldn’t help but squirm as Xia’s grip tightened. I looked down at her, expecting a sleep spasm to be to blame, but her clear cocoa eyes met mine directly.

  I couldn’t contain a smirk. “Good morning,” I said.

  “Seems to be for you,” she glanced down at her hand.

  I snorted. “Oh no, you’re not pinning that on me. That was all you.”

  “Mmm hmm,” she intoned with a sarcastic note. I couldn’t help but notice she lingered a bit longer.

  She stretched while I balled and released my fist to get rid of the unpleasant feeling of the blood rushing back into my arm. She was right back against me after a few moments.

  “These look like they are healing well.” She lightly traced the lines of the wounds on my chest.

  “Well, that feels a bit… tingly.”

  She withdrew her hand quickly, but I snatched it and used it to pull her on top of me. She half-shrieked and half-laughed, but didn’t resist. The result was her straddling me, our faces so close together that I could feel her breath tickle my upper lip as she exhaled.

  “Good morning,” I repeated. It was stupid, but it was the only thing that came to mind, which now clearly focused only on how little clothing both of us were wearing and how full Xia’s lips looked in the morning. Did they always look this way? Who knew? Who cared?

  I caught a rather mischievous look in her eye just moments before she pressed her lips to mine. The look caused a thrill to ripple through my body, but the greater response was when I felt her melt into my embrace and give way to my lips.

  There are many books written from the point of view of a woman during the fateful kiss between the romantic hero and his heroine. Pages have been written explaining the melding of souls, the buckling of knees, or the helpless sense of falling during a romantic embrace. Most of these descriptions make you assume the man is a fortress of stability and control, knowing exactly what effect he has on his heroine. Part of the romance and power of the scene is the heroine’s perception of the manly, emotionless hero—but I’m here to tell you that as stanch and powerful as the hero may be, if he were anything like me, if his heroine meant half as much to him as he meant to her, he would also be weak in these moments, not powerless, and maybe his knees wouldn’t falter, but he would give up every bit of power he had in his respective kingdom to make that connection last just one second longer.

  Which is exactly why I felt nothing but extreme anger when Nicholas came back into the room and Xia pulled away.

  “Oops, sorry! I can come back,” he said.

  I assume he was skulking back through the door, but my eyes were locked on Xia’s as she responded, “It’s okay, Nicholas. I was going to take a shower anyway.”

  When she disappeared into the bathroom, I found the closest thing and hurled it at Nicholas in fury. Unfortunately, it was only a pillow.

  He cowered playfully and snickered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s why we have the red tack rule!”

  “Where the hell am I supposed to get a red tack, you little bastard?”

  Nicholas bellowed with laughter and preemptively ducked. “I always carry one just in case. Why wouldn’t you?”

  I had thrown my last pillow and was half tempted to throw the phone. Instead, I catapulted myself back onto the mattress and joined him in laughter.

  “It’s not too late. She’s just in there,” Nicholas said, motioning toward the bathroom door. “Shower sex can be fun. I’m pretty sure you don’t need an invitation.”

  “Call me an old romantic, but I think I’d prefer our first time to be in a sleazy hotel bed, not in a sleazy hotel bathroom.”

  Nicholas tugged at the wrapper to a protein bar he retrieved from his bag. “Suit yourself.” He chewed for a minute before continuing, “Brunch with my mom is at eleven-thirty.” His chewing slowed. He wasn’t good at hiding the pensive look on his face. I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say. “She wants you to come. She has some information about the college, and with the…” his words started to come with some difficulty, “… magic thing in common, she wants to talk.”

  He added a quick, “I don’t know…anyway…” at the end with a dismissive tone.

  I waited to answer until he looked at me. When he did, I could see anticipation on his face, but it was also soft and hopeful like a puppy who knew he did something wrong but hoped you wouldn’t notice.

  I felt my nostrils flare and my eyelids tighten. I just nodded. “How much does she already know?”

  I was sure Nicholas took another bite of his protein bar to avoid answering, so after a few moments I filled the awkward silence by asking the question again, this time more firmly.

  “Everything I do.”

  I had to swallow to stop a profane word from escaping. “She knows about your possession?”

  Nicholas nodded.

  “Me?”

  He nodded again.

  “Orenda?”

  He didn’t nod, but he didn’t need to anymore. His lack of denial was confirmation enough.

  “I knew you were close, but I had no idea. You are hardly able to talk about this stuff with me.”

  “I never talked to her about it until I started talking with you. She’s the only one who doesn’t think all of this is entirely insane. I needed to talk to someone else I could trust.”

  He emphasized the word “else” so that I wouldn’t think he didn’t trust me.

  “You know I don’t like this stuff. I don’t want to know about it. I need to keep a good head on my shoulders too. Normally when you would go off on all of this, Quon and I would go out for a few drinks and make fun of you. We’d blow off some steam, remind ourselves that none of this exists. Now he isn’t answering his phone, no one knows where he is. Xia doesn’t seem concerned and he very well may be dead! He was always around to keep me grounded in reality and now he isn’t. My mom has a way of making all of this seem less scary, so yes, I told her. She’s here for all of us, and wants to be there for you. She’s been living in this world for a long time so I want you to talk to her so she can put things into perspective for me.”

  Nicholas’s rambling diatribe was so unlike him that all I could do was agree to meet his mother for brunch, not only because it was something I wanted to do (although I was feeling apprehensive and unprepared), but because I needed to keep him from having a breakdown.

  “Okay,” I spoke in a soothing tone. “I’ll go.”

  ***

  I always considered Nicholas’s reluctance to believe in magic odd, considering his mother was a practicing witch. I thought about the dichotomy this presented, but in my mind, being someone directly involved myself, I simply had to believe that either his mother wasn’t very good at the craft or he was so deeply hurt by what happened to us in the orphanage that he blocked out not only those experiences, but any he had with his mother as well.

  Still, thinking about how someone could believe completely opposite of what their life experiences had taught them gave me a headache. I often compared the thought process to any religion or faith, and saw the same dichotomy in the super zealous as they struggled with hypocrisy: sometimes in little things like how not to judge while being judgmental, and sometimes in larger things like how to continue an affair while preaching fidelity.

  Obviously I had my own dichotomies to work out. I was literally two people. What greater dichotomy was there? Where did Edmund end and Alexander begin? Did Alexander even exist? Or was Edmund the imaginary figure? If I were to believe only what I was told was possible, then Edmund was nothing more than a dream and I was Alexander, with simply no memory of the first twelve years of my life.

  But I knew differently and I had a select few experiences that confirmed my belief, not the least of which were my magical gifts. Comparing the importance of those few experiences with those in which Nicholas chose to place his faith helped me to understand him. The faith-building experiences that shaped my beliefs were founded in
magic; his were founded anywhere else. I clung to my beliefs because of those experiences, and he did the same.

  It became easier to see how Nicholas could dismiss the magic surrounding his life when we arrived at a small café for brunch and I saw his mother. Her skin was pale and smooth like porcelain, so untouched by the sun that it was almost translucent. The light in the room seemed to find the angles of her cheekbones in a way that made it look like she was glowing from the inside. Her deep burgundy lips were stunning, even from across the room of the little café we had entered. She looked up at us, her eyes smiling from beneath a large, floppy sunhat that seemed to fit the scene so perfectly I couldn’t imagine her without it.

  Quite honestly, she looked strikingly normal. Perhaps a bit more beautiful than average, but she certainly didn’t look like a witch.

  She stood when we entered, only to be dwarfed by her son as they embraced.

  “Hi, Ma,” Nicholas smiled as he engulfed her tiny frame in his giant arms.

  She chuckled joyfully and kissed his cheek, standing on the tips of her red stiletto shoes to reach him.

  “Mom, this is Edmund and Xia,” he continued by way of introduction. He then stepped aside as I came face-to-face with someone who struck me as remarkable. Perhaps what was most stunning were her piercing gray eyes, exactly the same shade as Nicholas’s when he was a child, the color of rain clouds—not dark or threatening, but ones that accompany the smell of grass just before the fall of the first refreshing raindrops. I was immediately swept back in memory to the alfalfa fields in Orenda as the earthy smell flooded my nostrils.

  “Call me Linda Rose, please. This is quite a pleasure.” She stepped forward and embraced me without hesitation, deeply inhaling at the nape of my neck as she did. “I do so love the smell of rain, don’t you?” she whispered into my ear.

  “Aren’t you a beauty? And so powerful!” Linda Rose chimed as she moved on to Xia. “Quite truly a warrior spirit. She’s feisty, Edmund dear. You’ll have quite a bit of fun with this one if you are up for the challenge.”

  Xia grinned at this, which caused me to melt, as usual.