We are sitting on a bench in a beautiful park, surrounded by trees and water. The ground is sun-drenched with flowers, all of them red. She looks beautiful sitting there in a rich burgundy velvet dress, her hair a storm of russet swept up to reveal passionately riveting blue eyes. She looks as she did the first day that I saw her… fiery, willful, alive.
She is winding red ribbon up onto a spool, and I am holding onto the end of it, trying to help her keep it from becoming tangled. She glances up at me and I can barely hold her gaze as she says,
"There is nothing that can be done about the past. No matter what atrocities one has committed against his or her fellow man, once they are done there is no going back. Regret is the worst part of being able to feel… regret over things said and done, or things that were not."
I can only look down at my hands, but that is no good because they are covered with blood. The blood is getting all over the ribbon, but it doesn't matter because the ribbon is already red. She continues,
"You are about to experience the full gamut of what it means to be human and you will have many responsibilities to confront, not the least of which is to be a father to your children; it will no longer be enough to simply provide food and shelter, as their intellectual and emotional growth are now inexorably tied to yours."
I hear laughing and water splashing to my left, and I look over to see Robbie and Lisa sitting on the edge of a short pier, their legs dangling over into the water. Viviana is a fish, swimming around their legs and tickling their feet. I get to my feet and start to walk over because I wanted to tell my family something important, something that if left unsaid will cut a whole in my chest trying to get out. I can feel it inside of me, writhing and thrashing to be freed. I try to call out their names, but the words remain on my tongue like ashes.
I remember that I am supposed to be holding the ribbon for Mary, and when I look down I see that the ribbon is bound around my wrists. I am tethered to her, so I return to the bench where she is sitting.
"You will be required to assume a prominent role in the new society that will need to be built. You will no longer be just an instrument but rather a decision-maker, someone accountable to the people of Libria. From the moment that you agreed to kill Father, you accepted this role." She eyes me severely, making me feel like my skin is bare-stripped and on fire. The fiend in my chest grows violent again, and I cough hard, trying to get it out. Blood spews from my mouth, spraying all over the ribbon and Mary's dress. She looks at me, impatient as if she's scolding a child,
"John, I don't mean to be cruel, but now is not the time for self-indulgence. You may or may not have time to see to your own needs, but I can tell you that it will be some time from now."
"But what about you, Mary?" I manage to whisper. "What happens to you?"
Her eyes squint at me, and I am unsure if she is confused or if she doesn't understand how I still can be.
"You still don't see do you?" She smiles sadly at me. She moves closer to me on the bench, and gently starts to untangle the ribbon knotting my hands together.
"John, I was a simply a pawn, nothing more. When Errol came over to the Resistance's side, we did not trust him. Jurgen tested him with the polygraph, same as with you and we knew that he was feeling, but we still didn't trust him. Errol took a liking to me pretty quickly. It is not unusual for people who stop taking Prozium to suddenly find themselves enamored with someone or something. Humans are made to love…and when the veil of the dose is finally lifted…well, it can be pretty intense."
She pauses for a moment, wiping a stray hair away from her face. A trail of my blood is left, smudged across her forehead.
"Of course Jurgen wanted me to indulge Errol, to keep tabs on him, and I did. But I also cared for him. He was a man of profound humanity, which is eventually what lead to his undoing."
A final knot in the ribbon is all that is holding my wrists together, but that is where Mary stops, allowing me to remain bound. She looks intently at me.
"John it is important that you understand this. The Council found out about Errol, not about his ties to the Resistance, but about him ceasing his intervals. It was originally meant to be him that they manipulated into contacting the Resistance so that he would unwittingly bring them to their fall."
"The way that they did with me," I murmur, as if under a spell. I feel a pang of guilt, and the demon in my chest rolls over, causing me to take a deep breath to avoid nausea.
"John, the difference between you and Errol, is that he had the benefit of seeing the big picture, not to mention that he had been free of Prozium for years and therefore not bound by its side effects and withdrawal symptoms like you were. He was already a part of the Resistance, and could see what the Council was trying to do. Unfortunately, Errol Partridge was never going to be a champion for either side."
With this last statement she pauses and I am forced to focus again on my hands. Blood is oozing out of my palms and wrists. But this blood isn't mine. I hear Robbie and Lisa laughing and splashing, and I get up to walk over to them.
"Hello John," Robbie says good-naturedly.
"Hi Daddy," chirps Lisa. She is standing waist deep in the water. The water is murky, and I am anxious about her being in there without my being able to see to the bottom, but then I remember that her mother is in the water, swimming around her and keeping watch. I see a tailfin flip at the surface as if to acknowledge this last thought.
"Come in swimming, Daddy…it's fun!" Lisa twirls around in the water as if to prove a point.
"Oh Lisa, don't be silly. John doesn't know what fun is," Robbie tips his head knowingly up towards me. "Well, unless you consider the rapid succession of gun katas executed at maximum efficiency resulting in the highest number of point-blank-range kills fun… right John?"
I cannot meet his eyes. Blood is dripping down off of my hands and hitting the ground.
Lisa looks at me and yells, panic-stricken,
"Daddy, don't let that get into the water, it will poison Mommy!!"
I am horrified by the prospect of further harming my wife.
"Even now I am a danger to her," I whisper to no one and everyone. They all nod gravely at me. Especially Errol, who has taken my spot on the bench helping Mary wind up the ribbon.
"You are a dangerous man John. A man to be reckoned with…a man who brought a reckoning," Errol says calmly as I walk toward him. "It was always going to be you who brought down Father…you or no one. If I had tried I wouldn't have stood a chance."
I look at him incredulously. "I think that you underestimate yourself, my friend. You would have done just fine." I smile at him amicably.
"Oh no John…I would not have been fine. After all, it would have been you they would have sent to stop me." Errol regards me sadly, using the ribbon to dab at the blood that is oozing from the hole in his throat. The creature in my chest rolls over again, slick with bile and regret. I try to think of what to say to him that will make it okay. But no words come. I can only look at him and then at my bloody hands.
"I told you that now is not the time for self-indulgence," Mary snaps. "Now is the time for focusing on the task at hand," and she nods at my hands, which are still bloody, but have resumed holding the ribbon for her to put on the spool. We are sitting on the bench again and Errol has vanished. "John you just can't keep coming in and out of this conversation with me. It is very important that you understand what I am trying to tell you."
I look at her intently and try to focus on her eyes, but every time I do I am overwhelmed by her intensity.
"Do you think that it was a coincidence that you and Brandt came to storm my home that day? After you killed Errol, the Council's attention turned to you as a possible infiltrator into the Resistance. It was narrow-minded of the Council to assume that Errol's defection was the result of his meeting me. He had been off the dose for over a year when we met. But I suppose they figured that if I had made a sense offender of one of their clerics I could do it again with another. I would be flattered if it wasn't so one-dimensional and demeaning."
"And if it hadn't worked," I added with difficulty, feeling the ribbon, sticky with blood come to its end in my fingertips. Guilt is beating its fists against the inside of my ribcage.
"Your journey down this path started with killing Errol, a man with whom you identified on a familial level, and was further facilitated by your missing an interval. Meeting me was simply the final straw. Besides, it was always a part of your fundamental nature to feel, in spite of the Prozium, otherwise you couldn't have been intuitive."
I want very badly to process what it is that Mary is telling me, but I am distracted by the sound of distant gunfire. I turn and look for my children; I know I need to be with them during the coming storm. Keeping them safe is my highest priority. I allow the end of the ribbon to slip from my fingertips. I look at my hands; there is no evidence of blood on them, nor is there any of the blood that I had coughed up earlier.
Using my wrist to release the lock, I disengage one gun from its holster on my forearm and the weapon is propelled into my hand. I move toward the pier, where Robbie and Lisa are standing hand in hand waiting. The water is as still and placid as a mirror. There is no evidence of Viviana; it is as if she never existed.
I turn back towards Mary but she has vanished.
Gunfire again…closer this time. It is time to go.
When I wake I can hear gunfire in the distance. Fighting in Libria has been constant for the past week since I killed Dupont. I am in a barracks where many of the Grammaton Clerics come to sleep and regroup after thirty-six hour shifts patrolling the war zone that is now our home.
I get up and go to another room where the children of the clerics are sleeping. Robbie and Lisa are curled up together on a single cot sleeping soundly. I sit quietly down on the edge and look at their faces. I am overcome with feelings, a need to protect and make a better life for them, and something fiercer that I have begun to recognize as love.
I have never loved anyone before. Even the ghosts in my dream where mere shadows compared to what I feel for my children.
It is time for me to go to work. It is with great difficulty that I take my leave of them with one last look over my shoulder.