Hi, everyone! I'm not dead! Alive enough to pound out another chapter of Pure Imagination (TM).
This is Chapter Twenty-Six. Enjoy!
"I think this is far enough."
"Ya think?"
I pursed my lips, feigning deep thought for a moment, then shook my head. "Nope. I actually think we need to keep driving, cross the border."
Mel smacked my arm. "I hate you!"
We'd been driving for three days straight, going further north than I'd ever been. Now in Washington state, the sun seemed lost to us behind an omnipresent curtain of iron gray clouds.
To ensure that the body we took for Wanda would never be traced to us, Mel and I had agreed to travel as far away as we needed. We'd only stopped once, at a hospital to hijack some of the soul medicine Mandy had told us about, Awake and Still.
Mel and Jamie had tested it thoroughly on each other in the backseat, taking turns being knocked out with one spray and being revived just as quickly with another. It was like any soul medicine—like magic.
Jamie had thought it quite funny that he held a secret weapon in the seat next to him, and he'd reveled in sneaking squirts of Still toward us in the front. Only after I'd gotten so drowsy I'd nearly run off the road and Mel had threatened to confiscate the bottles did he agree to stop.
Though we'd packed plenty of dehydrated meals and water for our long journey, Mel and Jamie were drained and exhausted, both quite ready to conclude the endless trip.
We were on the edge of the massive urban sprawl that was Seattle, Washington. "Big city's better for an abduction than small town, right?" I asked Mel.
I could practically hear the eye roll in her reply, dripping with sarcasm. "Yes, dear. You're quite right." Her tone then turned businesslike, as if she'd flipped a switch. "Now, what kind of person are we looking for?"
It was like she'd asked us which vegetables we wanted at the grocery store. It felt so wrong to be surveying the populace for the right face, like we were people-shopping.
"Obviously someone young," Mel continued, unfazed by our lack of response. "She needs to have spent a larger percentage of life as a soul; that way no one would have fought back inside."
"But not too young, right?" Jamie added.
"Right." Mel gave him an affirming nod. "She never wanted to be a child."
"So someone in her teens," I summarized.
It was early in the day, time for the morning commute. Plenty of souls were out on the streets, going about their business. I kept the speed of the Jeep low enough that we could focus on them.
Fortunately, the overcast skies had chosen not to spit any rain today, so people strolled along on the sidewalks without umbrellas or turned-up coat collars, allowing us to survey the faces and builds of passersby.
I found myself puzzling over how to find a face that looked like Wanda. When I pictured Wanda, I pictured Mel. I couldn't imagine any of these people—these souls—being like her. Being her.
"Jamie, what do you think?" I glanced over my shoulder at him. The kid scanned the sidewalks outside his window with an intense look of concentration.
He shrugged. "I don't know. None of them are...good enough. You know what I mean?"
Mel and I nodded, exchanging rueful smiles. No, there was no face out there that truly deserved to personify Wanda, not even the one that surveyed me now, eyes full of tenderness.
"Yeah, kid. We know what you mean."
"What about her?" Mel said suddenly, directing our attention to a young woman walking purposefully alongside the Jeep. I slowed our speed even more, keeping even pace with the dark-haired woman so we could scrutinize her surreptitiously.
She wore a long coat and heels and carried a sophisticated-looking handbag. Despite her professional attire, her face was young, fresh. Large round eyes, a muddy brown color with perhaps a hint of green, a dash of freckles across her nose. Red-brown hair cut into a short bob.
There was a rush of familiarity when I looked at this woman, this prospective body, and I knew at once why.
"Mel..." I began gently. "She looks like you."
Her eyes grew wide with realization. She probably hadn't even realized why she'd picked that person. "Oh."
We'd been searching for someone we could see as Wanda, but in that mindset Melanie had chosen herself. I didn't want that for either of them—having to spend the rest of their lives resembling each other.
"We'll keep looking," I reassured her. I sped the Jeep up, passing over the unnamed woman once and for all.
You don't know how lucky you are, lady.
We worked our way around the fringes of the city, staying in the quieter, more residential neighborhoods. Children played outside, people walked their dogs, joggers blew past the slower pedestrians.
I kept my eyes peeled for young women, feeling like some sort of serial killer on the prowl—it was a good thing no one would suspect us of that anymore. Even so, this method of kidnapping souls seemed much dirtier than before, much more dangerous and diabolical. I could only appreciate the veiled sun, the lack of bright light beaming into the car and into my eyes.
Each woman we saw I evaluated mentally, ruling out each potential body. Too young...too old...she's with someone else...walking two dogs, too noisy...she's got a baby. I thought back to the family Wanda had pointed out to me on our raid together, the soul couple with the human baby.
No matter how cruel the souls had been to us, and how brutally we'd treated them in retaliation, I wasn't at a place where I could take a mother from her child. Not in good conscience.
Every once in a while, Mel or Jamie would point someone out, someone whom they thought fit the bill. Sometimes we would agree on one, but she would duck into a building or climb into a car, making tailing her impossible.
Stalking was hard when we couldn't leave our vehicle.
It was well past noon before we caught a break.
"Over there," Jamie said abruptly. I followed his pointing finger to a pair of people on the sidewalk, what looked like a mother and daughter. They were engrossed in what almost seemed like a heated conversation—at least, what passed for heated with the souls.
"She's a little old," I began hesitantly. Even from a distance, I could spot graying strands woven into the mother's auburn hair.
"Not her," Jamie said impatiently. "The girl."
I refocused my gaze, looking clearly for the first time at the redheaded woman's daughter.
She was tiny. Barely half my height, from what I could estimate. A round face, delicate features, porcelain skin. Silvery blond ringlets cascaded down her back like a waterfall. The car windows shielded her words from us, but her eyes were wide with fervor, pleading with the older woman earnestly.
"How old do you think she is?" Mel wondered. Her brow was knitted in contemplation.
It was hard to guess—she was like Kyle's Jodi, too small and childlike to estimate her age accurately. "Thirteen, fourteen?" I offered with an oblivious shrug.
"That's young enough," Mel mused. "Is it too young?"
Jamie let out an exhilarated laugh from the backseat. "I'd be older than her! How funny would that be? Or at least I'd be taller than her."
I eased the Jeep to a stop on the edge of the wide suburban street, pulling out a map so I could pretend to read it. Over the top of the paper, though, my eyes peeked at the girl, still gesticulating animatedly with her child's hands at the older woman.
Her face was soft, ingenuous, almost angelic. It wasn't something she would outgrow; it was an inherent innocence in her whole being. "No one would ever distrust her," I said, speculating. "She looks like the kind of person you just want to protect."
"That's perfect, right?" Jamie's proud grin could have split his face.
The motherly woman tilted her head as she responded to the girl's appeal, cupping both hands affectionately around the girl's face.
My stomach twisted as I realized that, if we took this girl, we wouldn't be taking a mother from her child. Just the opposite—we'd be taking a child from her mother.
"Are you guys sure?" I heard myself inquire.
"Yes!" Jamie enthused. He'd been adamant about having a say in Wanda's new body—he knew what he wanted her to look like.
Mel caught my eye slyly. In spite of myself, I couldn't help but smile. "Then let's follow her home."
...
We were in luck. The two women lived less than a block from where we'd spotted them, and the Jeep sat inconspicuously on a nearby street corner, where the three of us could conduct surveillance.
The girl—she had no name to us, so we casually dubbed her Wanda Jr.—spent a lot of time outside, taking short walks around the neighborhood. Though she was a soul, she seemed to be going through a bit of a rebellious phase, trying to gain more independence from her mother, the redheaded woman.
Mel noticed that she would leave her house, a red two-story sandwiched in between two steel gray ones, she wouldn't be wearing any jacket or sweater. The mother would follow on the pretense of bringing her one.
As we surveyed the neighborhood block, we realized that an abduction couldn't happen in plain sight—someone would see us, remember us. We would have to lure her away, into a more private setting.
Naturally that meant getting out of the car.
A sort of quiet horror rippled through the Jeep as we all grasped that concept. Mel, of course, was the first to volunteer. Of course she would play the bait. Of course she would engage our target, entice her into a back alley where Jamie and I waited to ambush her. Of course—Wanda had done that sort of thing all the time.
We drove around the block several times, sizing up each alley between houses, counting the windows, measuring the distance, memorizing the street names, rehearsing the cheerful greeting for the girl.
We didn't want to scare her...we only wanted to end her life as she knew it.
The afternoon stretched into early evening, and Mel and I feared we'd have to wait until the morning. But as luck would have it, Wanda Jr. exited her home one last time before darkness fell.
"Let me out," Mel hissed to me. She opened her door silently, sliding out of the car and onto the nearly empty sidewalk as though she'd been walking there for some time.
"Go, go," Jamie spurred me, his voice pitching higher with nervous excitement.
I quietly drove past Mel, approaching the other girl from behind. Turned up the street, making a U back to where we'd been. I could glimpse the street I'd dropped Mel at through the narrow, secluded alleyway.
"They should be coming through here," I muttered to Jamie. "Quick, get me some Still."
He tossed me a canister, a bottle with an aerosol pump, small enough to conceal in my palm.
There wasn't time to panic, or even think about what I was doing. Melanie needed us to meet her in that alley. So I opened my door, stepping out of the Jeep into a highly populated area. Without a soul this time to protect me.
I hardly even noticed Jamie climbing out behind me, following me like an eager puppy into the protection of the alley.
We didn't even have to wait a full minute. Mel had timed her trap perfectly. She rounded the corner calmly, with our prey in tow.
"These are my friends," I heard her say to the small girl. A brief look of confusion had crossed Wanda Jr.'s pale, dainty face.
The bewilderment disappeared instantly. "Oh! Oh, hello," she greeted us, her voice a trilling soprano. She lifted her hand to me, as though to shake.
This was too easy.
My hand enveloped hers completely; I used the leverage to pull her closer to me, to shower her in a mist of Still.
She didn't even have time to utter one word. "Wh..." she trailed off before slumping against me, her tiny body dead weight.
"Mel, drive, please," I grunted, hoisting our newest hostage in my arms like a child. She couldn't have weighed over a hundred pounds.
Within seconds, the sleeping girl was concealed in the backseat with Jamie, and Mel was steering us back out of the city, toward our freedom.
"What was her name?" Jamie wondered.
Mel took a deep breath, steadying herself. "Her name was Pet. Petals Open to the Moon."
...
The road back was just as long, just as excruciating. Perhaps even more so this time, now that we had what we'd come for. We needed to get back to the caves with this new body. Wanda needed this body. Ian needed her in this body. Jamie missed her, Mel wanted to berate her, and I...I...
I wanted to thank her. I wanted to see her again, revel in the satisfaction that, after all she'd done for us, after all she'd sacrificed, she could live among us like she wanted, free of guilt or complications.
"I just...want to give her a hug," Mel confided in me one night while Jamie slept next to Pet. "I've never been able to touch her, for real. That's what I'm going to do first, to let her know I love her. And then..."
"Then lay into her?" I finished for her, cocking an eyebrow.
Mel grinned at me, no trace of shame in her smile. "I mean, first of all she took over my body. She pretended for months that I didn't even exist. Oh, I could have a field day with how she treated me."
"She cut your hair," I added. It had been such a long time since I'd seen Melanie with long, flowing hair. Before Wanda, her hair had almost reached her waist. I'd loved it as much as she did.
"I know! She kept getting it cut, shorter and shorter every time. It drove me nuts. She did it just to annoy me, I know she did." Mel ran one hand through her mop of hair, now grown out past her shoulders. "She even wanted to cut it after we came out here and found you. I think I would have actually killed her if she did."
I snickered. I'd missed this. I'd missed every part of Mel, not just her strength and her will and her passion, but her grudges, her rants, her frustrations. Everything she shared with me, I loved.
"She used to twirl her hair in her fingers, but then she cut it all off. So she started biting her nails instead. She never stopped doing it, either—look!" Mel shoved a hand in my face, blocking my view of the darkened road. Indeed, her nails were bitten down into uneven nubs. "D'you know how many years it took me to quit that?"
I knew the answer, but I didn't want her to stop talking. I wanted to hear Mel's voice, her snappy tone, her ire and resentment pouring out, not Wanda's everlasting patience and kindness. This was my Mel, and she was human, in every imperfect way.
"And now that I'm me again, I'm doing it! It's like I never even broke the habit. How unfair is that?!"
"Utterly unfair."
"And that's just the tip of the iceberg." Counting animatedly on her fingers, she began to list other grievances. "She ate all these weird foods, she got really pale from staying inside all the time, she let us get out of shape..."
Mel, I love you so much.
I could hardly concentrate on all she said that night, and every night of our trip back. I was basking, bathing in the warm, soft light she seemed to exude, just by her presence. Just sitting in the car beside me, Mel radiated a kind of magnetism, the kind I would expect to surround a celestial—heavenly, not extraterrestrial—being. The kind that would soothe every conceivable fear. The kind that inspired awe and worship.
I would gladly worship at Melanie's feet every day, for the rest of my life.
Except I was human. And so was she. We'd been apart for so long, and we'd missed each other so much.
So when we arrived at the caves, night falling, carrying both Wanda Jr. and a sleepy Jamie, we deposited our newest resident to Doc rather unceremoniously, not stopping to chat or reassure anyone of anything. We did not stay dutifully in the hospital with Ian or Kyle or Jodi.
Instead, I turned to Mel and asked, "Can I interest you in a bath?"
It was like no time had passed. Like it was just me and her and Jamie, the two of us sneaking around my dad's cabin like naughty teenagers.
She met my eyes slyly. "I'd love a bath...but what I'd really love is...a nightcap."
I exhaled slowly, overdramatically. "Think we're fresh out of nightcaps. How about a rock-hard mattress on an actual rock floor? There's even a pillow we can share."
Mel's lips were quivering, fighting to hold back laughter. "You know, Jamie sleeps in there, too."
"Ah..." I waved my hand dismissively. "I'll drop him in Ian's room. He can sleep there. Ian won't mind."
"Our neighbors might mind."
My heartbeat sped up to an almost steady thrum. I couldn't tell if it was excitement, or nerves, or both.
Either way, this was going to be interesting.
...and I'll leave it to the imagination what happens next ;)
Honestly, Mel and Jared are so much fun to write together. Their wit and banter gets out of hand so easily, and I have to remind myself, 'story, tell the story, save the fluff for another time'...
But anyway. Leave a review, tell me what you thought! As always,
Thank you for reading KylerM!