Turn 10
October 28, 2009
8:41 A. M.
Vienna Apartments, Pasadena, California
“Oh, Bueno. Las dos amadas estan despiertas. To think I would be able to eat my breakfast en paz.”
“Good morning to you to, Bibiana. See you’re as cherry as ever.”
“Ah, vaya al diablo por mi parte. For having HIV, the two of you are showing no signs of slowing down.”
… It’s with some degree of difficulty that I record this next part. While I wish I could say I parted on happy terms, that all was well between me and Molly, I would be lying to myself and trying to justify my terrible behavior if I did. If I pause or fail to seem comprehensible in some sections, forgive me and simply tread on.
(Anthony: Yeah, I already dealt with that bologna. This chapter was nigh unreadable when I got ahold of it. Thank the author that anything that follows actually makes sense.)
Bibiana Garcia was a Hispanic immigrant and now rather wealthy proprietor of a chain of garages throughout the LA area, a woman who just so happened to be a vampire. Short and dark skinned with long hair made into a single braid that reached her lower back, wearing a simple t-shirt covered by overalls, she didn’t have the look of someone who would have dominated the business world. Thanks to a few investments by men like me and Jack Wallace though, coupled with a few decades’ worth of experience packaged into a body that didn’t look older than twenty-five, and the girl certainly found little to want in life.
Save for peace and quiet for herself. While I am loath to admit it, I always needed a spy to keep an eye on that rascally sister of mine, especially one smart enough to avoid detection by my brilliant sibling. It cost a pretty penny and more; the conservative, catholic sensibilities of Miss Bibiana were alarmed by the wild and blasphemous livings of Molly and her lover. Still, as a favor to me… and a bit of nudging from Jack as well… the vampire acted to her duties, reporting to me whenever my conscious perked up and urged me to ask how my last surviving blood family member was doing.
Actually, that last statement wasn’t true anymore. Something else to talk about as I knocked on the door.
“So. Am I the one who has to get it again?” Bibiana asked, Molly and her girlfriend giggling all the while. The answer was self-evident; Molly wore only a large night shirt over her naked white body while her lover, a darker skinned maiden of the South, preferred lingerie to show off her various… assets. They were in no state to answer the door, though they often did in such attire when Bibiana or one of their two other roommates weren’t around to act as caretakers.
So imagine Bibiana’s surprise as she cracked the entrance open into their brown, dusky hall way and found two trench coat wearing men, Alucard to my side as I stood at full height, cane pushed into the ground and currently rubbing a hole into the expensive, rug adorned wood.
“Uh… cielos. Don’t tell me I messed up on the Centurion Thanatos. I swear I’m doing the best I-”
“Bibiana! So this is what Seth has been paying you under the table for. I shouldn’t be surprised.” My vampiric friend practically yelled, forcing me to roll my eyes as he did. Molly wasn’t deaf; there went my spy, even though I begged the man not to blow her cover. Really, though, I guess she blew it before at the mere mention of centurion; I’m not sure who to blame at this point.
“Would you care to take a walk my dear? I’ll drive with you to work, if you’d like.”
“Uh… I was still eating.”
Alucard flashed his cybernetic eye, distorting its purple color into several different shades rapidly just to make a point. “Trust me, mi amiga. You do not want to be here for this. Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn, but the heavens shake from the wrath of an angry brother.”
Bibiana must have been at least a foot or so shorter than me, but it seemed like she shrank to the floor at one mere glance at my contorted, angry face… especially when she noticed the red iris, detecting the growing, swelling dark power within. Without another word she grabbed a key and ducked under my outstretched arm, taking off down the hall in her oily sneakers as Alucard bid a nod and a farewell.
Leaving me to enter, much to my instant disappointment. The apartment was a mess, clothes, blankets and pillows laying almost everywhere with the brilliance of a four-year-old. A mound of dirty plates rose the sink, reeking as if they hadn’t been washed in a month, as did the trashcan that leaked a ghastly black liquid from its ruined bag and cracked container. Crack could be taken for another use here; this place resembled a crack den of the worst variety.
(Anthony’s Note: No it didn’t. Bibiana is compulsive in her cleaning when it comes to anything besides her own image, and will beat her own employees to make them tidy their stalls. While Molly and Jennifer were not the best examples of an ideal roommate, they did their duty in keeping their flat clean.)
(Flow: That wasn’t the only thing they kept pristine, right? I heard they loved to use brushes in every nook and cranny. Especially ones with lots of hair.)
(Anthony: And this is why I can’t make editorial comments.)
“Well, I would like to say that this is a surprise, but I’ve honestly set the bar so slow that every form disappointment does little to disturb me anymore. Molly. Jennifer.”
As was to be expected, the greeting I received from the woman was less than cordial. “Hello to you to, Mr. Prick.”
“Jen!”
“Oh, no! You’re expecting me to listen to this ass hat again Molly? No, you deal with him yourself. I’ll be in the room getting ready; I can’t wait to get screwed if it pisses off Scrooge here.”
“At least have the decency of calling me the Grinch, Jennifer. Scrooge is simply a compliment in business.”
So the plumb woman left, shaking her butt and showing off the whole of her posterior in that damnable thong just to disturb me. With a quick turn and scooping up… an unmentionable toy that I rather had not wished to know my sister used… the girl was gone with the door locked behind her, the apartment emptied of all souls save me and Molly.
Growth is an interesting measurement, especially among family. You never know how it affects someone, in what ways and to what degrees. While I simply became a taller, angrier version of myself, Molly had changed in a near reversal of what I thought she’d be. Short and feisty as a toddler, she now was nearly as tall as me though without any of my behavioral issues. Sweet, if not timid around me, Molly carefully picked her words before she used them and never to hurt others. There was a sweet soul behind that soft smile and brightly bleached blond hair that would have made her the perfect woman…
If she simply wasn’t gay.
(Anthony: And people wonder why I said screw it and made this novel free. NO. SETH’S VIEWS DO NOT REPRESENT OUR COMPANY etc. etc. etc.
“So. You had Bibiana spy on me? I had guessed as much. Always wondered why someone like her put up with us.”
I didn’t want to own up, so I went right into it. “HIV. Want to talk about it?”
I’ve never actually seen Molly surprised before. In fact, I wonder if she even felt it; it seemed as if she had read it in my face, determined the truth of my visit long before I had even spoken a word. I’ll go even further and say that she must have deduced months before that I would come one day, like this, to have this conversation.
Which is why there was no sorrow, no shock, no frown even if I had said those words menacingly. Instead, patting her uneven lime couch, the girl scooted over as she rolled the hem of her oversized shirt out and said “We can. Please sit down, brother. I don’t get to see you as much anymore; shame if we don’t get to do things like we used to.”
I wanted to be mad, I needed to be mad, and even though I was I cooled enough to do as she said. Dropping hard into the furniture, the cheap thing croaking as if it would break, I was spared from a reprimand by my saintly sweet sister thanks to nature alone, though I waited and practically begged to be told off.
We had no mother, and Moll
y was never given the chance to learn what it was like to be her. There was no masochistic satisfaction for me today.
“Well. What do you want to know brother?”
“Everything. When did you find out? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you want me to help you?”
So everything she expected to tell me anyway. Sighing, folding her hands into her lap and the extra length of her tee, the blue eyed savior took a deep breath as she worked the words once over in her mind, finally letting them out when Molly felt as close to composed as she could be.
“I knew ahead of time I’d get it. I knew, without a doubt, that this kind of life would catch up to me. Jennifer herself even told me, about the time of our second date. I remember that I was eating a fettuccini with my second glass of wine when she told me the truth, let me know that this would be our last date if I wasn’t okay with it.
“So I guess you could say this is my fault. Even when my girl friend told me that I’d get AIDS, I said it was okay.”
That was too much already, forcing me to stand as I tried to keep my anger within. I wonder if she thought my demonic red eye was simply a burst blood vessel, a bruised eye or some other violent induced injury.
Or maybe she thought it something else. Maybe, in my wrath, this wasn’t the first time it flashed as I gritted my teeth.
“Why? Why consent to death?”
“For love, brother. It’s always for love.” Molly replied, smiling brightly even as my frown grew bigger. “I’d do anything to feel love, or give it to anyone else… and to share in a mortal love, the kind only Romeo and Juliet know as they pass, is the ultimate love a being of any gender or orientation can know.”
“Wrong! That’s wrong! That’s a lie and you know it!”
All Molly did was blink, though my shouting could have wakened the neighbors. Pondering her statement, ignoring my emotion and taking my words for were what they were, the woman than nodded with her slim and thin chin as she explained
“You’re right, as always brother. It is not the eternal love, the promise of a family after death afforded to your sect of religion… but this is all that I can hope for. This is all we so called worldly lot can imagine; a single life well lived, instead of an eternity of peace to come.
“My weakness as ever. I can only see what is here and now. Never was good at making predictions, or planning out long term. Probably wouldn’t have married Jennifer-”
!
“I mean; I wouldn’t have... darn. I must have really wanted to tell you. I wouldn’t have slipped up if I hadn’t.”
?
“I wanted to tell you, I really did. I was worried though you’d carry out Gary’s last threat against me if I ever decided to marry a woman. That you would not only disown me entirely but force me to change my name, humiliate me so badly I’d have to leave the country. I couldn’t risk it, even if I believed you wouldn’t do it.”
…
…
… … …
Molly… married a woman?
Writing in a journal, examining the past… it makes it easy to reflect now, to find words that I can actually articulate to describe what I was feeling. Even now though it feels so surreal, thinking about the one line Gary Sears had sworn by every ring of Heaven and Hell that Molly was to never cross. The one thing I prayed to god she would never do.
I imagine you Gen Ys and you Liberals and everyone else who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word sacred can’t even understand why I’d say this about Molly, so I’ll make the image clear.
A family member of a Christian family partaking in homosexual marriage is like a Catholic priest being told his cross upon the altar was used as a dildo.
Times of Peace: Volume 1 of the side adventures to The Mercenary's Salvation Page 42
