by Dawn Dagger
I hoped she’d wake.
Over the course of the week, Dierdre woke and thrashed in a horrid fever, then fell back into a sort of coma. Her tongue was infected. A doctor cared for her and healed her. One of the abused women, a 22-year-old who had miscarried, took care of Dierdre when I was helping around the shelter. She bathed her and changed her and fed her with a tube. She tried to untangled Dierdre’s hair, but it was near useless.
Dierdre could only stay awake for small periods of time, in which the woman encouraged her to walk around and do calming stretches. A man gave me odd jobs and I began to save money.
My hair grew longer and I began to braid it. Amy made many friends and took care of the younger kids and the babies. She was an amazing phonics teacher.
Finally, Dierdre was well enough to shower and eat on her own. She wandered down the halls like a ghost, silent and staring off into space. Every time I saw her I ached. I would be the same way, but I had her to be better for.
Sometimes I took Dierdre’s hand and tried to pull her into a dance. I twisted the lyrics of her song to be sweet, to be gentle and soft. I would lead her in a spin she would reluctantly fall into, trying to serenade her. I never admitted to singing the ‘beautiful, beautiful’ girl part, but I would sing all the other parts. Sometimes the blue sky would be blue eyes. Sometimes the flowers were pretty girls. Sometimes the babbling brook was my singing darling. I don’t know if Dierdre ever knew I meant her, sometimes Amy. She always kept the hollow, lost look in her eyes. I did not take it to heart. I did whatever I could for her.
One night, as I held her while she slept, I ran my fingers through her hair. I finally sang a perfected, altered version of the song I would never sing to her aloud, when she could hear me. I didn’t want her to punch me. I didn’t want her hurt, or upset. I knew she was fragile. She had lost everything.
“Blue eyes, oh blue eyes,
Smile at me.
Sunshine, kiss my face,
And if your tears fall,
I will not cry,
For I care for you.
Flower, oh flower,
Look at the sun.
Look how he smiles at you…
The way I do too.
Poet, oh poet,
Share me your song,
I want to sing with you too…
Yellow, oh, Yellow,
I love you so.
My short-haired friend,
And tall, beautiful woman,
So sweet, so soft.
Show me the secrets you have…”
She did not stir as I held her. Part of me wished she would. Some adrenline pulsing part of me wanted her to wake up so I could sing the rest of the heartfelt words to her. Part of me wanted her to hear every feeling that I felt in my chest every night. I wanted to pour my care for her into her chest, to make her whole. I wanted to fill her hollow spaces.
But she would not wake up, I knew.
She would not hear my croaking rendition of her careful wind chimes. She would not be able to listen and accept what I was too shy to offer.
“Beautiful, beautiful girl,
I watch you from afar…
Come say hello, and smile at me,
The same way as do
The sun and the stars.
Beautiful, beautiful girl…
I come closer still…
Come dance with me,
Come hold my hand…
And happy, we will be…
Still…”
One day I took her shopping with the money I had saved. I bought her warm tea and a yellow sweater, and took her to a barber shop down the street. I asked them to try and save her hair. They agreed.
But, when Dierdre sat in the chair before the mirror, she pointed to the shaver, then to her hair. “Dierdre you… you want to shave your head?” I asked in disbelief.
She nodded, her hollow, blue eyes hardening.
“You’re sure? Absolutely certain?”
She signed ‘yes’.
I sighed and relayed the message to the barber. Before she could shave Dierdre’s head, though, Dierdre grabbed it and flicked it on. She held it for a long time, tears filling her eyes, then closed them tightly. She ran the razor against her scalp, leaving an unfixable shave in the center of her head. The dreads that were once hair fell to the ground.
She opened her eyes and handed the razor to the barber.
I watched as the rest of her hair was shaved off. Her scalp was shiny and white, with only the smallest of fine, white hair poked out of it.
We went back to the shelter afterwards.
One day, the nice woman who cared for us pulled me aside. “As you know, this is a no-questions-asked place.” She murmured to me, after asking me to sit down at the table in the kitchen. She poured me a cup of tea and I sipped the bitter liquid.
“I do…”
“But you also know that, as we care for people, we must also be law-abiding citizens…”
“What are you fearful of?” I asked, raising a brow. “We haven’t been doing drugs, I promise you.”
“Yes, yes I know… I just…” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “You’re wanted. You were, two years ago, anyway?”
I carefully took the folded square of paper out of her fingers and unfolded it. It was a blurry picture of me and Dierdre. Dangerous read the headline. Dangerous criminals involved in a long string of attacks and museum raids.
I swallowed and set down the paper. It did not say anything about murders. Did the man from the hotel raid really live? Were we not murderers? I didn’t want to dare hope. “These are not us.” I lied, raising my chin. “We did not do this. We were framed for this by… her dad. We escaped him and… he did this to us to try and find us.”
“What did he do to you?” The genuine concern in her eyes almost choked the lie out of my throat, but I couldn’t give up this place. We needed to be safe.
“He was a human trafficker. We tried to get away and this is how he caught us. Someone turned us in, believing they were law-abiding citizens. That’s why we look the way we do.” I hated lying to her. I hated pretending that we were victims of something so awful when we weren’t. Dierdre might have been. I never bothered to ask. The idea that something so vile could have happened to her made me feel sick enough to throw up.
The woman nodded and took the newspaper with a shaking hand. She crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into a nearby wastebasket. “I apologize.”
“Don’t,” I said, sipping at my tea. “It’s your job. You keep people safe.”
She would have never believed you, I tried to convince myself against the guilt wriggling in my stomach. You have to keep Amy and Dierdre safe.
The tea tasted like bile, but I continued to swallow it, smiling bitterly. I was no superhero. I was a liar.
I had to do what I had to do.
Dierdre felt hollow.
What would she be now? She had nothing left. She could not teleport. She had no hair. Her greatest beauty, something that offset her height, was taken from her. She had no tongue. She could not speak. She could not sing. God, she ached every time she opened her mouth and found no words left her.
Clayton did not hate her, but it didn’t matter. What good was someone who cared about you if you couldn’t communicate? Dierdre hated herself. She hated the people who had done this to her.
Dierdre felt like a ghost.
Anger and rage had kept her climbing to the top of the mountains of grass in the deep of the night, when Clayton had finally feverishly fallen asleep, when he was no longer watching her, making sure was alright. She would climb to the top of the mounds of grass, in the hot, stifling air of this world she hated.
She would stand at the top of the hill and scream the guttural, horrible sounds that clawed out of her throat until she sobbed. Then she would sob and fall onto the hill until it felt as if her heart and soul had been carved out of her body.
After a long while of this, the anger
and rage had finally carved out everything that she was, and left her with nothing. Then she felt hollow.
Dierdre was a ghost.
Clayton tried to take such good care of her, but it did not make her feel any better. She felt so terribly, horrifically empty that she thought she might die one day in her sleep. How could beings this empty live? Why would the world be so cruel as to let something as nonexistent as her breathe.
Dierdre was a shadow.
When no one looked, Deirdre wrote poems. She dipped her hands, all the way up to her elbows, in grey and black paints, and painted water paint pictures of pain and anguish. Her poems were stilted, horrible things that sounded like crunching glass and twisting metal in her head. Sometimes she wanted to give it to Clayton and have him read it, to prove to her that, out loud, what she created was not as horrible as it sounded in her head.
But she never did.
She wished Clayton would tell her she was still beautiful. She wished he would hold her hand and promise her that she was everything still. That she was beautiful and strong and worth existing. But she never let him. He would, she knew. He would. He would hold and make her feel as if it were alright to live.
But she didn’t feel as if she should live. She didn’t want Clayton believing it so passionately. She was nothing. She had nothing. How could she live?
So she continued to paint ugly, horrid things, then stuff the canvases under her bed where no one would find them. She continued to write poetry that was the sound of sharpening knives and grinding teeth.
Dierdre continued to be a ghost. A shadow.
Dierdre was hollow.
I woke in the middle of the night, only to find Dierdre missing from her cot. I hurried through the halls in search of her, my heart racing. I found her in the bathroom, running her hands over her smooth scalp, over and over. She stared at herself with hollow, tearful eyes.
I saw myself in line of sight of the mirror, but she didn’t turn. I hugged her gently from behind. She cried softly. I held her until she stopped, when I led her to bed. I sat with her until she fell asleep.
I crawled into my bed and pulled the jaguar out of my pocket. I laid him on my chest and stared at him, outlined in moonlight. I tapped his forehead, then turned onto my side, tucking him close to me.
Tomorrow morning, I decided. Tomorrow morning, I will start making everything better.
I would try to get Dierdre to the MMEA. To get her home. I would fix everything. I clutched the jaguar tightly. And, if I couldn’t, then we just wouldn’t save the world. We could be happy. Leave it to the MMEA to fight people. They would locate us and the artifacts on their own, soon enough.
Until then, until the world ended, I would work towards making a home for Dierdre and Amy. They deserved that much. I could do that much.
I closed my eyes and let relief fill my lungs like cool air. I had a purpose. I was dead to the world, but not to Amy and Dierdre.
We could pick up the broken pieces of everything that had happened and make a new picture. It couldn’t be that hard. It just took a little forcing and a lot of hard work. I wasn’t a stranger to either of those.
I would make a beautiful image out of these broken pieces.
Epilogue
The dark haired woman stood on the edge of the mountainside, staring into the violet distance. Her head ached. Everything was wavering. She could feel the tunnels of time falling apart inside her head and reassembling. They twisted and turned like a rubix cube, giving her a horrendous headache.
Despite how everything changed, an ugly spot continued to stain each timeline. There was someone who had changed something large. There were not supposed to. There was no peace in her head now. Someone who was meant to die was alive. Something that was meant to happen did not. She hated the migraine it gave her. She was half tempted to reach into her mind and grab a hold of the dark spot, wiping it out permanently. She couldn’t, of course. She could not see the consequences of her own actions. She had to be the watcher. She had to wait and watch.
She was fearful that this is what would undo what had been done. They had so carefully completed every task, and yet these fools were unknitting the very threads of reality and time itself. What foolish beings. She could do nothing to stop them. She was powerless. She hated it.
Who thought they had the right to just step in and stop something that was meant to happen? They ruined everything and gave her a horrible headache. What an awful creature. She ought to reach through time and strangle her. She could not. She would not.
Heroes were disappearing from strands of time. The strands were staying dead because there were no heroes to break through and save them. All because of this dark spot that sat in her mind, in time. It left footprints of darkness that rooted in and poisoned the strands of time. Were they even aware of what they had done? Were they even aware of what they were going to do? They were planting seeds of destruction.
No, they couldn’t. There was absolutely no way they knew what they were doing. In an attempt to save everyone, there were going to kill everyone. Nothing they would do would stop what was meant to happen. She could not believe that they had shaken the core of reality so horribly.
“What do you think of this?” She asked the orb stuck in her eye. “What do you make of the havoc that is going to change absolutely everything?”
It did not answer.
It never answered.
She did not expect it to.
The girl trekked across the mountain side and stared down into the dark, icy cave. At the bottom, she knew, was the man who had given everything to be a hero. The man she could never tell that what he did would not be enough.
She painstakingly crawled down the side of the cliff, cutting open her hands and scraping her knees. She did not float down out of respect for what he had done. Upon coming across his frozen body she would not look into his face. She instead reached into his satchel and withdrew the black figure. She pocketed it, then climbed to the top of the mountain once more.
She looked at the frozen, sparkling thing for a long while. It was truly beautiful. And horrific.
She would rehide it. She must. If she hid it in the deepest, darkest crevices of the world, no ne would ever be able to find it. The dark spot would be erased. She could ease some of the aching in her head. Eventually everything would still be destroyed. But she would try. For him. He was a hero, after all. His legacy had to live on.
She would fix this. For just a moment, if that was all that mattered. She would make him a hero for that much longer.
About Dawn
Dawn Dagger has been an avid reader and writer since the age of six, and has placed highly in multiple state-wide writing competitions. The author of My British Bear and Slave of the Sea, as well as featured in Kya Aliana's Stories for Around the Campfire Anthology, Dawn loves curling up with her cat, a cup of coffee, and a great book. She can be found on her blog, Rosy Dawns and Radiant Musings, her website (dawnelizabethdagge.wixsite.com/dawndagger), or somewhere wandering in the woods.
The Atlantic Island Universe
Atlantic Island Trilogy
Atlantic Island (Book 1)
Rising Tide (Book 2)
Omega Protocol (Book 3)
Atlantic Island: The Traveler
Atlantic Island Universe: An Anthology
Vacancy
Vacancy (Book 1)
The Forge (Book 2) - 2020!
Divided
The Magic Book (Book 1) - October, 2019
The Lost Enclave (Book 2) - April, 2020
Multiverse Academy
The Elite (Book 1) - Early 2020
Guardian by Rennie St. James
Jaguar (Book 1) - February, 2020
Mosaics by Dawn Dagger
Fragments of Time (Book 1) - March, 2020
Odyssey by AJ Kurtz
Marked by Fate (Book 1) - April, 2020
Destiny by LaLa Leo
Genesis (Book 1) - May, 2020
About Fredric
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Fredric Shernoff is the author of the Atlantic Island Universe, including the Amazon Top 100 "Atlantic Island" and the Barnes and Noble #1 bestseller "The Traveler.”
Fredric lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida with his wife and best friend, Cheslie, and their three amazing children.
Join the mailing list at fredricshernoff.com to stay up to date on new releases!
This is a work of fiction. All reference to events, persons, and locale are used fictitiously, except where documented in historical record. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright 2020 by Dawn Dagger and Fredric Shernoff Published by Whitemarsh Productions LLC
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, except in instances of quotation used in critical articles or book review. Where such permission is sufficient, the author grants the right to strip any DRM which may be applied to this work.
