After Bessie's breakfast in solitude concluded, she recalled what she had intended to do that morning before visiting Jerome. Obviously his well-being was more important and she tended to that first, but now that he was no longer around, she needed to occupy her time and settle down her complicated, disorganzied thoughts until then. Lila Valeska circled her mind for every minute Bessie was awake. Just when she had respite for tens of seconds, she'd fleetingly wonder why her body felt so emotionally tired and exhausted, and that's when Lila would come right back.
Bessie sighed heavily as she brought her syrup-streaked plate up to the dirty dish counter. She thanked Mario—to which he told her to keep her head up and stay strong—and left the cafeteria.
Days ago, the weather still felt like only the dying days of summer; a seasonal change was imminent, but the air was still pleasant and warm. Ms. Valeska's death seemed to be connected and thus accelerated autumn's process. The change was likely only in Bessie's mind, but she could have sworn the grass was yellower, the clouds gloomier, and the sun dimmer. The practice tent was never far, but there was weight added to everything physical Bessie did today. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to go today. She wasn't really going to hone her skill, after all, she was just going for a distraction, something to get lost in.
She still kept going anyway. Routine felt like the only absolute left in the world right now, the only thing that would not dissolve and leave her forever.
Jerome's caravan was coming up. She needed to pass it on the way, and she wished regrettably that she had chosen the path of more resistance if it meant not being reminded of every awful thing that happened in the last twenty-four hours.
Purposely avoiding the Valeska caravan in her sights, she walked on. Thinking about that pile of clothes she saw in his home, however, slowed her down. She considered taking a few baskets and washing them for him. Taking that chore off his hands wouldn't be too hard. When people grieved, it was a considerate expectation of others to make everyday life just a little easier so that the ones in mourning could focus on more important things. Bessie couldn't cook all that well. Laundry, though, was something she could definitely do.
It was just a thought. But the more she continued walking and soon overtook the Valeska caravan, the stronger the inclination became and the better it sounded, until she stopped all together. She was sure he wouldn't mind.
The caravan was still well within sight, she didn't travel far, so she doubled back. Though the trailer had not changed physically overnight, it now gave off the appearance of a sad, lonely little hovel of a home due to affiliation. A look of fresh abandonment seemed to overtake its once decent atmosphere, even if it still housed two tenants.
Bessie noticed something off-kilter about the front door the closer she got. The perspective was off somehow. Arriving at the steps, she found out why. The door was open a crack, offering a peek only to black inside. Bessie tried hard to remember if it was him or her who forgot to close it properly and she felt apologetic if it had been her. It couldn't have been Jerome at home already, he had gone with Mr. Cicero. Even though Bessie had a meal between, that didn't seem like a long time.
"Jerome?" she called.
No answer returned. After an anticipative pause, clearly nobody was going to reply.
A long dark shape in the waning grass near the tires wedged in the caravan's underbelly hooked Bessie's attention. Glancing on reflex, she gasped and nearly fell over when her feet tangled reeling back.
Sheba was staring Bessie in the eye, partially curled on the ground, her forked tongue flickering, aware of the girl's presence even before she could be spotted.
Bessie held out her hands placatingly, stiff from her frozen nerves. Usually that hand signal worked on dogs, but she had no idea what to do with a boa constrictor. "S-Stay. Stay," she coached Sheba.
An uncaged Sheba loose inside the caravan was one thing. Bessie could just close the front door and let Jerome easily deal with her when he got back, but if the snake was uncaged outdoors and Bessie left for assistance, Sheba will have slithered away by then. Bessie didn't want heartbreak on top of another. Jerome losing his mother and then subsequently their pet would be more devastation than he could handle.
Bessie swallowed hard. She didn't want to do it. She really didn't want to do it...
Sheba head was raised. She watched Bessie a couple moments more, tongue testing the air a few more times. Uninterested by the precedings any further, Sheba turned her head to the circus, away from Bessie, and slithered indifferently towards that direction, uncoiling her long, diamond-patterned body.
Bessie looked around for anybody else to call, but just like earlier, the grounds were more empty than normal. Biting her lip so hard as to nearly puncture it, she bided her time, bouncing on the balls of her feet nervously. Just when she managed to conjure a small burst of daring, it puttered out and she held back. Her silent prayers for a last-second savior to materialize from the fairground went unheeded.
Get it over with, get it over with. NOW! Bessie blanked her mind. It was the only way she could get through this. In a few steps, she caught up with the snake. She knew so little of boa constrictors. All she had was her observances of how the Valeskas handled her, and so, she tried to mimic their exact movements from memory.
Grimacing so badly that her jaw felt like it would dislocate, Bessie did her best to wrap her spindly fingers over the thick trunk of a body. Taking the head first was the most intimidating, but necessary part. If Bessie had any choice, the head would be the last part she'd ever want to place her hands, but if not restrained, Sheba could potentially be poised, and free, to attack whatever was grabbing her from behind.
Hesitating a couple seconds, moaning quietly, Bessie finally bent, gripping Sheba just a couple inches below the head to keep her jaws forward. Sheba stiffened, but did nothing to wiggle, writhe, or escape. Though Bessie's fear was easy to get out of hand and accidentally tighten her fingers, she kept aware to keep her hold solid but gentle. No doubt that Sheba wouldn't take kindly to practically being strangled.
Good enough to carry on, Bessie held Sheba at arms length, trying to edge the head away, and then wrapped her other hand over the massive midsection. Sheba was more solid and heavier than anticipated. Bessie got terrible flashes in her mind of the snake snapping her jaws right for Bessie's face. She felt like she could dodge a bullet for how tense and wound up she was in preparation. Despite also being made of flesh and blood, Sheba's body wasn't offering much heat. Not cold, but not warm either. Typical of reptilian kind, but it still felt unnatural to Bessie in the sense that she'd never owned a pet that couldn't produce it's own body heat.
Bessie almost broke into a run, but she didn't want to jostle and agitate Sheba into a frenzy. It was agony for every extra second that Sheba remained in her arms, but Bessie put one foot in front of the other, moderate but never stopping. Climbing the steps, she bumped the door open with her backside and headed straight for the tank with the heat lamp still switched on over it.
"Okay, okay, inside now, ew, ew, ew, ew," Bessie motor-mouthed under her breath. Maybe Sheba would react aversely to a louder voice, Bessie didn't know, and she wasn't going to risk raising the volume to anything above a stage whisper.
A clang of panic vibrated in her chest. The snake's heavy body had started curling around her arm. Jerome told her once that it was because of the warmth in human bodies, but that did nothing to change Bessie's mind. Setting the snake back into her cage, shaking off the last of her tail—which briefly brought the question to her mind, where did the head end and the tail begin on a snake?—she snapped shut the cage a little too hard and clicked in the lock.
Bessie gulped in her first free breath in over a minute. Sheba coiled and relaxed over the log inside her glass enclosure, flickering her tongue a couple times, but seemingly content. Though no slimy residue was left behind, Bessie's hands still felt dirty. Or maybe it was just the need to shake off Sheba's texture and feel from her skin, but either way, the snake's presence still tingled in her palms. Jerome always told her that snakes were not slimy, the scales just made it look so, but Bessie wasn't so keen on technicalities right now. Unable to touch anything afterward, she hurried to the sink tap and gave her hands a short rinse.
Drying her hands on a dish towel hanging from the cupboard underneath, she shivered to shake off the ordeal. She should just take the clothes and leave. She journeyed across the lane to the other end where the clothes pile was, trying to avoid an eyeline with Sheba's tank in the middle of it all. Swiftly passing, Bessie arrived on the other side. A small, black clasp of flesh-toned makeup was sitting on the counter and open. This must have been the make-up Oksana had given Jerome to hide his black-eye. It was already developing a dent in the center for how vigorously it had been used.
The messy pile of clothes was just as it was before. Bessie placed her hands on her hips, giving it a once over. It shouldn't have been too hard to take a few sweaters at first. Making to grab a black one right off the top to begin, patterned dots on a different garment grabbed her attention. Bessie blinked, thinking sun spots were still in her eyes, leading her imagine colors that weren't there. But the pattern didn't change or spin. Bessie leaned sideways to see better. A grey, wrinkled cardigan laid there, just out of sight. The darkened spots dotting it were not a manufacturing pattern, they were too lawless and concentrated in certain areas to be. They were stains, almost like flicked paint, with just a few larger blots.
Bessie could hardly make colors out, every light in the caravan was off except for Sheba's heat lamp distantly casting minor, stretched illumination, but the stains were definitely dark enough to stand out on the heather grey base. Upon further inspection she uncovered a new, faded color just to the right of the heart.
A crusted yellow stain, like that of dried mustard.
"What are you doing here, Bess?"
Bessie's soprano gasp was so sharp that she felt it slice her throat. She turned, nearly giving herself whiplash.
Jerome had come home.
He stood there in the doorway. Because of the darkness within the caravan, the light of the outdoors behind him was dazzling, outlining him in a sort of aura.
His voice had been soft and inquiring, but Bessie tried to explain hastily what she was doing. She didn't want him to think she was encroaching on his privacy. "Jerome, I'm sorry! Sh-Sheba, she got out—she got loose and-and no one was around so I tried—I brought her inside and I thought—I wanted to make things easier for you, the door was left open, so I was going to help you wash these. I'm sorry if I shouldn't have walked in without you being here, I—"
While she talked, he studied her neutrally, nodding blankly every once in a while. That bass line thump on Bessie heartstrings kept pounding. She quickened the tempo of her words, as though Jerome would cut her off at any moment and refuse to hear anymore. But he didn't. He waited her out patiently.
Bessie finished, maybe a little winded. It was a silly thing, but her adrenaline got going after being startled, and the situation did look like she was snooping around for whatever reason.
Jerome held his elbows and nodded again. "Well," he said finally, "far be it from me to get mad at you for trying to do something nice for me." He smiled. "No hard feelings."
Bessie relaxed. She thought back to the mug incident earlier. That had been an unpredictable burst of anger, and she wasn't quite sure if he was liable to be set off again. She didn't want to give him a reason to, his psyche must have been already so wrung out and exhausted, she didn't want to be seen negatively in his eyes. She only wanted to help.
"Wait a second. You touched Sheba?" said Jerome, a cheeky half-smile appearing. He hadn't had occasion to wear one in a while.
"Carried her, actually." Bessie tried to keep her spine from jellifying at the memory. "From outside to here."
"Well, look at you," Jerome commended. He looked over his shoulder at Sheba in her tank. "I thought you of all people would have gotten somebody else to take care of it."
"Nobody was around, and if I left she might have been gone by the time I got back."
Jerome left Bessie temporarily to stand in front of Sheba's case, bending to inspect his pet through the glass, meeting her stare with none of the fear Bessie kept. "Well, she doesn't look at all upset," he said. "Good job, Bess. Thank you for taking care of her when I wasn't around. I know it must have been hard for you."
Now felt like as good a moment as any to ask. "Jerome?" Bessie said with trepidation.
"Hm?"
"Your sweater." She pointed to the unseen side of the small hill of clothes. Jerome definitely wore this the other night. "Is that...blood?"
Jerome stopped what he was doing. He faced her. Rising from his knees, he came over. Bessie backed into a corner to give him space to investigate for himself. The area narrowed in this particular side. It was so narrow that Jerome's body blocked her completely, not even giving up enough leeway for her to go around.
"You didn't hurt yourself, did you?" Bessie asked, concerned. "That night when we sat to watch the tent go up?" The night when she had cried over John, she recalled in embarrassment.
Jerome's eyes roved the pile, finding the offending cardigan. "Oh, that." He shrugged boredly. "Just a nosebleed."
"Nosebleed?" Bessie looked over the stains. Some spots were drips and drops, others were smears, and some were flecked. He had to have been catering to the bleeding for several minutes to have made such a mess. The outflow must have been severe. She thought back unpleasantly to the well-dressed stranger whom Ms. Valeska brought to her trailer back in Blüdhaven—the man who gave Jerome his black eye. "Did somebody do this to you?"
"No, no, nothing like that," Jerome assured, shaking his head. "Actually, this happened the morning after that night. That was the reason why I told you I wasn't feeling well when you came to visit. It was just one of those random things you wake up with. I took care of it." He smiled down at her. "You don't have to worry about me, Bess."
Bessie nodded in acceptance. She was no stranger to utterly random nosebleeds once in a blue moon, either. "Okay," she said hesitantly. "But you would tell me if something like that was going on, right?"
"Absolutely. Cross my heart."
Bessie nodded, content that her concerns could be put to rest. She'd overreacted to the discovery.
Seemingly all was patched between them. Jerome returned to Sheba. He smiled down at her, tapping her enclosure softly for her attention. He noticed Bessie watching, too.
"One day, Bess, I'll get you to wear Sheba like a scarf."
A/N: I just broke 2,000 views on this story recently. Thank you to all the readers!
In my original notes, Bessie was actually supposed to step inside the caravan and passively mistake the log in Sheba's tank as the snake itself, and that's when Sheba surprises her by being loose. But then I thought that, because Bessie's is nearly paralyzed in fear by Sheba, she subsequently wouldn't return the snake back into the tank, she would just leave the caravan and shut the front door to keep Sheba inside, letting Jerome take care of her later.
But I needed things to go in a particular way, so I had to rewrite events to happen as they did in this chapter. I hope it was a change for the better.
Jeromeisminelol - I definitely intend for the case to be one of the two, but I can't say which.
Not even ONE wrong thing? Wow, that's high praise.
Guest - Enchanting writing style? Ooooo! How nice of you to say! :D Thanks a lot! I hope I'll able to continue to be good enough to keep you around until the finale.
