Challenge #2 Response
The Fear
The Fear
“I would have given my battered, filthy, immortal soul not to see Elijah’s face just then; to avoid the disgust and the hate I anticipated there. More than anything, I rejected the possibility of finding fear there. I couldn’t handle that.
I thought he understood what this meant to me, what I had at stake. Instead, the need that previously enveloped his aura disappeared abruptly, leaving a gaping wound in my mind where I expected to find him, waiting for me.
I just needed to keep telling myself what a blessing in disguise this was. I didn’t want to talk to him, he, apparently, didn’t want to look at me.”- Felicity Flowright (page 79.)
The smell of lingering blood and antiseptic filled the air, nauseating me, but effectively distracting me from the situation at hand. I didn’t want to see this body. I didn’t want to identify this victim, look into the face that I removed life from with my own two hands, feel his blood sticking to my skin and his hands on my wrists. I still don’t want to remember how it was supposed to end.
I locked my knees and clamped my teeth together so tightly I heard them grinding, all in an utterly futile effort to negate the awful pressure driving me onward, into the blissful unknown beyond the curtain. Fate intended for me to go forward, but I just couldn’t. Pulling back that curtain meant utter damnation; it meant admitting that I was, in fact, a murderer. My knees impacted the ground, sending sharp, refreshing splinters of pain along my legs, which shook to violently for me to rise under my own power.
From this vulnerable, weak position, my hand stretched forward, drawn as though by invisible strings to the nylon barrier. I clenched my fingers around the dry, textured fabric, gripped until my weight hung entirely supported by the limb. My body strained against gravity, fought the dead weight of my legs. A single snap echoed throughout the still vacant room as one support came free, allowing the drape to swing more loosely, and I was on my feet, trembling violently enough to rattle the rest of the curtain’s tiny, plastic hangers.
My vision wavered as though my eyes themselves spasmed within my head and then, suddenly, the curtain was gone and nothing but air and infinite time stood between me and this man whose life I so easily ended within a span of several hellish minutes.
The face of death stared back at me, no more hideous than any stranger on the street below, meandering home, drunk and lost. In fact, Charles looked better, almost as he had in life, as though someone had drawn a crude dot on his head as he slept.
The blank, pale perfection of his face, marred only by one single, dark bullet hole, just above his smooth browline, cut into my heart and an instant later, I was on the floor once again, kneeling, groveling before this man who ruined my life. I spoke to him perhaps three times throughout my employment and saw him twice more beyond that, yet life in his absence appeared deathly still and dusty gray.
My body writhed and my throat sealed tight with the mortar of unshed tears. They condensed withing my trachea, burning a path to my lungs from lack of air.
My vision tunneled down to a lone point, focusing on nothing but his face and that mark. I vaguely recall hearing a nurse bustle in behind me, pause momentarily, and then shrill for help. It sounded inexplicably wrong, like someone behind a window talking as though you could hear them as well as you could see them.
There were hands, everywhere, touching me, poking, prodding, lifting my limbs for some sign of response until I just want to scream, to tell them to leave me be, to let me die in peace, but I can’t, because that would mean opening my mouth and letting the tears out. I swat them away mindlessly, and I continue swatting until another, different pair of hands rests on my shoulders, calming and immovable.
They’re gone now, talking behind me, their words flowing together into a long, convoluted hum. Talking but saying nothing. Another voice, belonging to the hands, cut through the humming then, sharp and authoritative, commanding the nurses away.
They left, abandoning me to the one conversation I knew I couldn’t have.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?” I can feel his essence filling the void its absence left in my mind.
I know he wants me to tell him that I had no choice, that I acted foolishly, but in my own best interest. Even if I could open my mouth, I wouldn’t tell him that. He’s been to good to me to hear those kind of black lies.
“Fae, look at me.” I could have ignored him, but I didn’t. Just like taking a Band-Aid off, Mamma used to say, the quicker the better.
I tilted my head up, steeling myself for his anger, but all I met in those green eyes was a pity so understanding and all consuming I nearly screamed aloud. You don’t pity murderers. Elijah, of all people, should know that.
“Fae, please. Just tell me what happened. Nobody else ever needs to know.” He knelt down, reaching out to me, and I leaned forward into an awkward embrace.
“Here, come with me,” He stood abruptly, pulling me up with him, out of the room and down to the end of the ward. “The nurses need somewhere to get away from it all,” he explained as we walked. “There’s something I want to show you.”
Outside on the tiny balcony, the air was a crisp and refreshing as I could have asked for, and the heady, floating feeling of being trapped inside the hospital began to fade. Stopping abruptly, Elijah rearranged me in front of him and resumed his embrace from behind me, placing his hands beneath my jaw and pressing up. The tilting motion forced me to swallow, slowly clearing the congestion from my throat and noes, although I still needed a Kleenex or twelve.
“What do you see?”
I saw the tips of the Embassy’s finest skyscrapers, but I didn’t think that was quite what he was getting at, so I said nothing and waited.
Sighing, he tilted my head even farther back, until it rested securely on his chest. “How about now?”
“Stars?” I inquired shakily, pressing words past the quivering lump in my throat.
“Precisely.” I heard the smile in his voice. “And why can you see them now?”
“It’s dark.” I replied, beginning to comprehend.
“Think for a moment,” he implored, mouth inches from my ear, without a chance of being overheard. “What stars did Charles Vendel show you?”
I broke. I stood on that balcony sandwiched between the railing that fenced the tiny concrete slab in and the grip of the only person in the great wide universe who could possibly understand and I sobbed like a child. Elijah held me. He didn’t let go, not even when my sobs moved us both, just rearranged himself into a sitting position and situated me onto his lap.
When I came back to myself, we were still sitting, exactly the same, as though it were utterly commonplace to breakdown on the 12th story balcony of a hospital. Elijah certainly acted as though it was, leaning in once more to say:“Now will you talk to me?”
I chocked back another round of tears, swallowing hard before croaking, “Yes.”
“What happened?” he inquired. “Did he catch you by surprise?”
“I killed him.”
“But how, why?” he sounded exasperated, and I couldn’t blame him. Obviously I killed him, or he wouldn’t be dead. But he didn’t know what he was asking of me and I didn’t think he could handle the truth.
“Why do you need to know?” I exploded, wriggling in an attempt to free myself from his grasp. “I killed him and that’s all there is. He ruined my life and he was going to ruin others and you couldn’t get there in time and I took a gun and shot him What else is there to tell?” I was crying again, in fury and frustration this time, and he made no move to console me as I tumbled from his loosening grasp, slamming my back into the unforgiving grated fence behind me in my haste.
He didn’t move at all in fact, just sat there and stared at me, as though I’d sprouted another head. I’d expected horror, and this was my reward.
“You didn’t know?” I hated myself for asking, but I had to know.
“No,” he replied slowly, moving his hand as though to touch me, stopping just short of my shoulder. “I didn’t know the circumstances.”
“The circumstances?” I chocked on the words. “Is that what they’re calling murder these days?”
“Fae-”
“Don’t,” I hissed, feeling the hysteria rising once again, “Don’t tell me this will be okay, don’t try to console me, just listen. I killed Charles Vendel. I looked him in the eyes and I shot him. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever done in my life and I will never again if at all possible, but it was a crime.”
“Self-defense,” he retorted, standing before me, just far enough away that I could see his expressive face contort with a flurry of emotion without needing to look up. Anger, grief, despair, danced through his expressive eyes, warning me away from an argument.
I never was good at listening.
“It wasn’t self defense,” I cried. “Self-defense would have been him finding me and my shooting him. I chased him, Eli. I hunted him down because I was livid and when I found him, I was already in way over my head. This was my fault.”
He didn’t argue, just continued to stare at me, before stepping forward and wordlessly embracing me. For a man who allegedly spent more time with Intel drones than people, Elijah just understood. Right now, somehow, he knew how stupid arguing with me would be and how much I needed someone to just be there.
After an eternity passed our rooftop haven, Eli lifted his head and said, apparently to the air before us, “You’re forgiven.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” He looked at me then, truly mystified.
“No,” I answered after a moment’s deliberation. “I want Charles to forgive me. But,” I added, resting my head on his chest, “Since that’s not going to happen, I suppose you’ll do.”
“So will you come back?” His head was tilted ever so slightly, inviting me even as he issued his tiny dare.
“Am I still welcome?” The lethargic calm sweeping over my body pleasantly replaced my earlier panic, leaving me docile, but relatively incapacitated.
“Of course. What would my night sky be without its brightest star?” His voice mellowed once again, soothing me like the lullabies of my childhood.
“What if I’m afraid of the dark?” I murmured, less uncertain than downright pigheaded.
“ Bring a flashlight.”
Leave it to Eli to pitch my uncertainties off the hospital rooftop so unceremoniously.
Twenty minutes later, we were en route to Paris and the Wrinkle awaiting us.
