Please Don't Go (34 page)

“
Not you.
Her
.”

Have some fun, my lover. I won’t grow jealous like most women do.

“
How European of you,” Zephyr said with a sneer, turning his head away from Karen. He could not look at her. Even hearing her struggle was more than he could bear, as repugnant as the woman had been to him during their past acquaintance. He clenched his eyes shut, trying to picture himself elsewhere.

Be here, with me. Don’t you run away.

The claws dug deep into the fatty matter of Karen’s spinal cord. They wiggled around, feeling at the insides of her, trying to play her like a grand piano- a living, fleshy puppet. She yelped in pain and Zephyr removed himself from that wrenching sound as best he could. He could practically smell her blood wafting through the air, salty and bitter. She gasped for air, crying out in a way that he would imagine a woman in the throes of childbirth or rape may do. Karen belted into the air for reprieve, thrashing her arms about the tabletop, sending the condiments and candle toppling to the floor, where the candle extinguished. Zephyr smelled the charred odor of the extinguished candle wick, suddenly wishing that it had caught ignition upon something, that it would burn the whole mess to the ground. No, thought Zephyr. She would never allow it to end that way.

“
Please...” Karen choked as her rival scratched her nails along the exposed gash on her spine one more time. Karen’s face looked frozen, that she was in such an immediate and deep shock that she could not offer anything to the world besides a Medusa stare, turned to stone from the reflection of her own impending demise.

Open your eyes, my lover. Watch her scream.

The fingers dug deeper into the four inch incision, rough and bloody. Karen whimpered, her eyelids fluttering in pain. She thudded her head to the surface of the table again as she drifted into a state of unconsciousness.

Open your fucking eyes.

Zephyr opened his eyes.

She dragged Karen from the table, dropping her to the ground with a dull thud.

This is what I do to those you love. I will bring them here. I will break them in half, unless of course you allow me to break you in half first. The choice is yours. Look at this girl.

Karen came sliding across the polished wood floor, skirting up against the legs of Zephyr’s chair. A deep red gash was sliced across her forehead, presumably from the vicious drop off the edge of the table. Her backside, he could not see, but he knew what lay there- an open wound that she had fiddled with like a curious toddler-surgeon. A trail of blood followed her body, the wound seeping its sustenance out. Whatever she had planned for Karen, it was not to end on a pleasant note. If Karen was allowed to leave, then the game would be over, without a doubt. She replied to his thought patterns:
This girl will never leave this house again. You have brought this upon her, by your indirect actions. For every leap you make away from my embrace, I take one thing you love. You’ve had ample time to learn. And now the learning is over. Punishment will be determined and handed out to you as necessary. Do you understand?

“
Yes. Please let her go. It’s not too late,” Zephyr moaned, averting his eyes from Karen’s writhing body. She had entered a quiet convulsion, and he could not bear to witness it. “You can fix this.”

Is your lesson learned? Say your lesson is learned.

“
My lesson is learned,” Zephyr stated, but he did not feel that his tone was sincere enough to convince her. “My lesson is
learned,
” he repeated with mounting conviction.

Liar. The lesson isn’t learned until you hear her scream.

“
I won’t lie to you,” Zephyr lied. Karen’s face twitched with a calamitous barrage of movement. She seemed to be in the grips of some minor stroke, from the shock befallen her. She needed medical assistance, and quickly.

I don’t want to cause a mess, so I’ll take my business downstairs. But keep your ears open. Stay where you are, with your thoughts your only friend. Listen to this girl and think of those you love. Be here and now with those very thoughts. If they have a mind, either strong or weak, I can bring them here. Lover, I can bring them here.

“
I understand.”

That is the first step. This is the second.

Karen’s body stumbled across the floor in violent motions, past the peripheral vision of Zephyr, still restrained in his chair, wiggling his forearms to attempt escape. The basement door, at the inner wall of the kitchen, slammed open so hard that the wood almost splintered. Karen’s body gave off a high squeak as she slid across the tiled floor and down over the threshold towards the basement. With each step, her head cracked against the wooden planks- loud, then quiet. Loud, then quiet, twelve steps in succession. Karen and her assailant descended into the fiery jaws of Hell.

When the thudding ceased, the screams began. Bitter and grueling at first, but they soon became low and whimpering. What had once been the rebellious gnashing of hope had transformed into a lost life because of Zephyr’s backlashes. Karen had now been brought back to consciousness, via the unbearable pain. As she moaned and begged for her life, he could only stare at the ceiling, wondering to himself how he had ended up here.

As Karen let loose terrible shrieks into the night and died, Zephyr could only picture, in his mind’s eye, the many loved ones in his life, feeling those vicious bodily attacks as Karen had. This was part of The Bitch’s ploy, to break him by form of substitution. This was the horse’s head beneath his bed sheets. The warning shot before the battle.

Whatever he pictured in the evisceration of Karen, he knew it was only half as horrendous as the real carnage that ensued beneath his feet, beneath the rotting planks of his permanent cage.

10.

Lana had set out at the break of dawn. She had kissed her husband on the cheek as he lay motionless in bed, wishing him a successful day at work. He had not awoken and gave little worry to his son. The evening before he had explained, “He’s still a kid. Probably figured he’s in too deep with this chick of his, took off into the night because he wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. Maybe he even knocked her up. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, if that’s the case. He freaked out, drank too much beer or smoked a fat doobie, got in his car, and headed for a soul-seeking mission to California or Florida or some place like that. He’s a big boy, and he can take care of himself. It’s only been a few days. Don’t coddle him, Lana. Don’t fucking coddle him. And don’t get your panties in a bunch.” At this, Lana had wanted to tear her husband’s eyes out from his sockets. How could he dare be so callous? So ambivalent about their
missing son?
Yes, Zephyr was a legal adult, but still. Not a phone call... not even a note. Nothing. Although there was something consoling in her husband’s explanation, that Zephyr had wised up and ditched Jackie, it didn’t make things easier in her worrisome mother’s mind. Him leaving Jackie would be for the best, were it true, but something told Lana that it was not the case, that her child was in genuine danger.

Even as a toddler, she had felt a deep mental connection to her boy. She had lost her way, but that invisible bond still existed. It was hard to explain to any woman who was not at one point in her life a mother herself. It was bigger than genetics. Telepathic, but without all the science fiction implications.
Enough. You’re sounding like a hippie again. The hippies are dead, Lana. The hippies lost the war
, she thought
.
Her past and present were in an arm-wrestling match and Lana felt nothing more than a witness to the back-and-forth machismo of it all.

Lana had a grueling seven hour drive ahead of her, but it didn’t matter to the Mother Lioness. She would beat the traffic at key junctures along the highway, based upon her reasonable and early departure time. She would stop only twice on her trek, once for breakfast and a second time to relieve herself. Given that there was no unexpected traffic delays she could be at Rattup’s door by lunch time. She had no real evidence of her son’s whereabouts other than Jackie’s admitting that Zephyr and Rattup had spent quite a bit of time together as of late, but it would be a suitable place to begin her investigation. The Bangor Police Department had already been put on alert, but they had no record of anything out of the ordinary, nothing that should cause alarm. They, like Zephyr’s father, were banking on the idea that Zephyr had taken an extensive walk, one where he would ponder the direction of his life over the coming years- who he would become, what profession he would take up. “It’s what these kids do when they’re in college,” a local Bangor officer had explained to Lana, as if from experience. “They do a lot of them goofy drugs, they start talking about God and the meaning of life, and they go on a walkabout.”
A what?
“A walkabout. Them tribal Aussies do that, they just go wandering in one direction or another, out into the desert with nothing but their spears and face paint. They go the same paths as their ancestors—their
songlines
, they call them. For very long periods of time. It’s a rite of passage, ya’ know? Didn’t you ever say screw it all and go on a walkabout yourself? Just disappear to show your parents what a bad-ass you were? I bet you did.”
Well, yes, but this is different. It was a different world back then. Now there are all these creeps and weirdos. And the internet! Who knows what crazies you can meet on the internet. My son is very impressionable.
“It’s a walkabout, lady. He learned it from watching you.” And with that, she had slammed her phone down. Were they not taking her cry for assistance seriously? There was something shaming in being preached life knowledge from a salty-mouthed officer of the law. How dare he! She had called back an hour later, beginning to spin the wheels of progress with another officer, who had filed the Missing Persons form with the county.

After stopping for a coffee and bagel, Lana double-checked her printed driving directions that she had obtained from Google. It had been more than six months since she had last visited Zephyr in Maine, and so the path (the
songline,
as the idiot cop had deposited into her brain like a fresh, shiny nickel of wisdom) was not as fresh as she would have liked it to be.

She pressed on the gas with extra fervor.

Her baby was in trouble, and he needed her help.

11.

Jackie’s car sounded like loose change in somebody’s pocket, but it was running just well enough to move her from one location to another. State to state was shaky, but she had AAA on her side if something went awry. She was still unsure as to what her true course was.

Away
.

Just
away
.

Her grandmother lived in Massachusetts, and something in the idea of visiting her eldest living relative calmed her nerves to a slow boil. Grandmothers always knew the right thing to do in the quest of life, at certain junctures. Right? Of course.

Her mother’s mother had only just started to lose a grip on her mind in recent years. She could still retain long term memories and thoughts, though. Her logic was flawless, as well. But on occasion, a piece of brain matter would enter through her ear canal or eyeball and be whisked beneath a rug at the back of her skull, just as quickly as it had come to her. A synapse or two would fail to fire and she was unaware of that fact.

But for the most part, she was a smart old bird, quick with a warm smile and a sage anecdote.

Jackie had not bothered to call ahead, mostly because she was not positive as to her trajectory. She had awoken as she did every other day, the thought of Zephyr becoming less and less prominent inside of her mind. He had run off, she had convinced herself. That fact, if true, further complicated the predicament of her true feelings. Her grandmother would be the most important ally in this battle, and a subconscious being behind her eyeballs had told her to go to Massachusetts; that it would be the smartest move before making a rash decision in either direction.

Coming to a slow roll at a toll booth just past Kennebunkport, Jackie fiddled through money on her middle console, searching for quarters. “Good morning,” the toll booth attendant, a tall man with a wide smile said to her. He sniffled, as if he was in the early stages of a nasty cold. “One dollar, seventy five cents,” he added, implying that she was not quite moving fast enough.

“
One second, I know I have another quarter here,” Jackie apologized, gripping at her dollar bill and two quarters. If she could not find a second quarter in her jumble of sticky useless pennies, she had another single dollar bill in her purse, but would need to stop at an ATM machine before she was into New Hampshire (that toll required a full dollar, and so she would subsequently be short on the matter). Jackie had never been one to prepare herself for tolls and that always aggravated her. She traveled often, and knew the exact charge of all tolls along her route, but never implemented enough forethought to supply herself with that money. Often, she found that the toll workers would fall for a coy smile or an I’m-so-sorry, but was not sure if that song-and-dance would work on this one. “Dang,” she said to herself, looking over at the toll both worker with a subtle flit of her left eyelid.