Disclaimer: Demona Launce belongs to me; The Syndicate and CGB Spender belongs to Chris Carter and 1013 Productions. No infringement intended.
Spoiler(s): None
Keywords: Angst, Violence
Archive: Only with written consent of the author;TrekPhile47@hotmail.com
I know it's full of angst, but who is a human without something to shape the character?
***
Yulianna Jarkov watched as her family was murdered. She watched in the silent wonder that any four year old could as the dark man came up to her parents, and elicited a response in her father. The murder was a man who'd intended a robbery, but had gone terribly wrong as Yulianna's father grabbed for the gun. The gun fired twice, making Yulianna's ears hurt, and it was only then that she started crying. When she hit the ground from her mother's arms, she cried harder, feeling the burning pain as concrete collided with baby flesh.
The gunman looked at Yulianna, his eyes filled with confusion: could he kill a child? He leveled the gun at the crying baby, but decided better of it. He turned and bolted: a memory of the street.
Yulianna crawled to her mother, the pain in her knees and wrists disabling her, "Mama? Papa?" There was no answer from either of them; they lay still, their blood pooling around their bodies, the gunshot wounds budding on their chests like roses.
Yulianna's chubby fingers wove through her mother's hair. She cried harder, not understanding why her parents didn't come to soothe her pain.
***
Yulianna sat again only a week later, as quiet as a mouse when the new woman came to see her in the orphanage. She was tall and proud, her hair shining and her eyes smiling. She picked up Yulianna and tossed her into the air, laughing as Yulianna squealed with delight.
"Sweet Yulianna," she cooed. "My name is Nina and we're going to America."
Yulianna didn't know this woman or what this trip entailed. All she knew was that Nadia was going to take her away from the orphanage, where she was picked on and had nothing to gain.
The beginning of her downspiral began then.
***
Floor five, apartment number 452: a nice, two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan Island. It was full of furniture and books but it was rarely lived in. It was an empty home of empty promises for an empty future. It was lonely and full of nothing; no signs of love or comfort in this house.
It was the home of Demona Launce. Their feelings were mutual: she didn't love it back.
She hadn't lived here long, maybe for a year at the most, since she had been given an opportunity in America again. She had spent most of her childhood in a scrappy woman's shelter with her "mother." Before America, there was Russia, her home and the land where her pain began as she had been introduced to this new mother. She went back to ensue a five-year stint with a man she had come to know as a father, a friend and a lover she had never had.
She had started her life without anything---and now she had everything: money, a nice home, status, food in her stomach---
And false hope. She hadn't felt the pluck of real hope in years. It was a dull ache she couldn't avoid.
It was almost as bad as the memories.
***
"Yulianna," Nina slapped the child hard. It was lucky that she had even connected the blow.
"Mama, no!" the girl cried with a voice and wistful pain that could only come from a child. She was silenced by another jab at her face from Nina. Yulianna began to bawl pitifully like a wounded animal as she pushed herself lower towards the vent behind the shabby cot.
"Give them to me," Nina hollered, grabbing for Yulianna's frail arm. Her eyes were bloodshot from her shooting up and she was so high she was seeing double. She was looking for the bag of marijuana that she had misplaced. She grabbed again at the six-year-old's flailed arm and yanked her from behind the cot. Yulianna howled in pain as the open vent ripped flesh from her arm.
Nina shook the girl hard, screaming at her until her head rolled around like a rag doll's. The tiny girl screamed and tried to get away from her mother. "Give me my bag!"
"I don't have them," Yulianna cried, her voice thick with sobs. Nina slapped her until the skin was red and purple from the bruises.
"You liar!" Nina screamed at the child. She shook Yulianna again until the mucus ran thick from her nose into her silently screaming mouth. Nina continued her abuse until Yulianna sank to the cot, unconscious.
Nina looked a an hour later and found the bag had been in her pocket the entire time.
***
Demona's answering machine blinked red with messages.
She looked the thick folder on the table that had been lying there for the better of two weeks unopened, then put her jacket over it as a second thought.
"Demona, this is your banker, Anthony Ludlow. Please call back: 555-6676."
She didn't have time to bullshit her bank account: there were more important things to worry about. Things like her next meal, the next assignment, staying one step ahead of everyone else, trying not to fall---
Erase.
"Demona Launce: you have just won---"
Erase.
Last message. The harsh and scratchy voice was unfamiliar, but as she listened to it, she recognized it. It was the voice that had elicited fear in the back of her mine. "Yulianna, this is your mother. Why hadn't you told me you moved back to New York?"
Because you're a cheap whore, Demona thought with rancor.
"Yulianna, I want to talk to you, I want to understand why you ran away."
Wild guess, Demona cursed, her fist dangerously hovering over the machine.
Erase---no wait, don't.
"Mother" was noting more than a greedy crack-whore that wanted a child of her own, even if it wasn't hers. "Mother" wanted this child not to love, but to give for a hundred dollars a pop for crack money.
"Please, Yulianna, I love you. My number is 555-3863."
What a lie, Demona thought. Nina Grigorevny probably wanted Demona to do her a favor, probably drugs.
Demona picked up the phone to dial the number, then put the phone back on the cradle. "I can't..."
***
"One, two: buckle my shoe.... Three, four: my mother's a whore.... Five, six: pick up sticks.... Seven, eight: she's gonna stay out late.... Nine, ten: I'll never see her again...." Yulianna chanted over and over again, rocking her body back and forth on the back stoop of the woman's shelter.
Everything hurt. All of her muscles hurt and even her thoughts hurt, and so did the scar from six years before. She felt bruised battered and dirty. Nina had brought home her boyfriend to try to get some drugs for herself. At Yulianna's cost.
Yulianna could feel Isaac's 30-year-old body pressed against her twelve-year-old one. She defended herself with her teeth---like a wild animal. Trying to maintain a 175-pound man's most primal of urges. She failed. Isaac beat her, then left with Nina.
Yulianna stunted her tears. No one saw her tears, no one cared.
There was no reason to cry.
***
Demona picked up the folder from beneath her jacket. She opened the manila envelope for the first time, feeling the stiff paper in her hands.
Hands shuffled over paper; over files, pictures and eye witness accounts. Olfactory senses smelled the death the blood and the bile that lifted from the freed pages. Ears could almost hear the screams of the dying.
They are what you are loyal to.
There was no loyalty to Demona. It was whomever she felt like humoring. Her eyes grew wide and her jaw hung as she looked at the graphic realism of a Stephen King novel's source.
They are what you are loyal to.
If that was the case, Demona was loyal to a forty-year project to evade two alien races that wanted to destroy each other. Battlefield: Earth.
It was too tabloid to be true.
She began with the eyewitness accounts. Thousands of doctors from hundreds of countries, each accounting the truth as they had seen it, then confiscated. Each was a tale of horror: bodies that did not die, that bled green and held blinding gas inside them, that melted into green puddles. There were fantastic accounts from people who had been attacked with men who had no faces, who had seen one man go into a room, but another had come out.
She read medical forms. The biological forms of what a human/alien hybrid is comprised of. They were human from the egg, but alien from the sperm, genetic materials of extra-terrestrial origin. The hybrids display inhuman strength, invulnerability, and activated brain parts not normally found in humans that result in far-reaching mental abilities from visual and mental stimuli.
She read official forms from The Syndicate claiming that all hybrids that had been found and/or discovered were killed by the Faceless Rebels/Alien Bounty Hunters. The Grey aliens however, provided genetic material to provide hybrids from only select few to anger the Alien Bounty Hunters.
Demona's mind raced as she read completely valid accounts of completely true things.
She got to the pictures.
She felt sick as she saw each picture that had been stuffed haphazardly into the folder. Some were formal pictures of patients who were being autopsied on, their innards decimated by the "Black Cancer." There were organs that had been compared to healthy organs. There were pictures of live patients whose skin was red and blotchy from radiation ands were stuffed with thin spaghetti in swollen lines. Eyes had been pulled forcibly open, exposing nothing, but milky black reflected the flashbulbs.
The candid pictures were sickening. Patients lay strapped to tables, ominous silver tools hovering over them. The patients were screaming, their faces red with the effort and the veins in their necks bulging. Pictures of barracks where test patients were cowered in the corners, their eyes haunting with pale skin that almost glowed. Their eyes were portraits of fear, allowing the viewer to delve into their frightening reality.
There were bodies stacked in mass graves, all slumped over one another, stacked in disposal, all embracing one another in their death.
Vomit pushed up from Demona's stomach.
They are what you are loyal to.
It was a train wreck---Demona was morbidly fascinated and couldn't close the pages.
Her hands shook and her knees refused to hold her.
It felt like she had been throwing up for hours. She hung onto the side of the toilet, every thought of the patients brought dry heaves of saliva and blood spilling from her mouth. Her sides ached from retching so hard.
Having everything in her stomach thrust outward made her feel better about what she had just read. She didn't have to look at the pictures without not having to feel the pain that came with the files. Maybe she should have started with an empty stomach.
Demona didn't even bother to brush her teeth of the stomach acid, there was no way she could get rid of the feeling those pictures gave her.
They are what you are loyal to.
Loyalty to such a thing as that was a loyalty to Satan himself.
It made Nina Grigorevny seem like a saint.
***
Yulianna had finally taken some pity on Nina, now that she knew a little bit of what Nina was going through. She had finally read in a stolen library book about the results of narcotics. She knew all the symptoms of a high, and knew what happened because of them. She had felt something move towards her surrogate mother, who'd assured Yulianna that she would have died if it weren't for Nina's good nature. And Yulianna believed it.
So now, at sixteen, Yulianna was taking care of her mother, holding her head above the toilet as she retched unconsciously into it. Each heave brought a wave of foul smelling stomach contents, making Yulianna nauseous along with her mother.
Yulianna bathed Nina in one of the bathtubs, washing the vomit of days before from Nina's body, stoically silent as she did it. Yulianna had given up crying so long ago, since her mother's boyfriend raped her. She hadn't cried since.
She dressed her mother in a pair of warm pajamas that were given to the shelter by a charity. Just as Yulianna put her head between her hands to sleep another night of nightmares, Nina heaved another bout of vomit onto herself and the pajamas and Yulianna had to clean her all over again.
Yulianna could never forgive her mother for making her a caretaker when she should have been out with other kids her age, drinking beer and getting laid. Yulianna hadn't seen a day in weeks when she had bothered to drift outside of the woman's shelter and high school. It was amazing that she kept her good grades despite the way life was crumbling around her.
She was starting to get more depressed and detached from the world, her only escape was drawing the scenes she had dreamed for herself that she wished was reality. She slowly began to fall into self-loathing and hate, convincing herself she was everything that Nina's drunk-induced anger had stated: she was nothing more than a two-bit whore. Yulianna desperately needed some to love her and to love in return.
Empty hope in an empty heart.
***
Demona felt a little better after she had taken a shower. The water was scalding hot; peeling off the flesh that had seen The Syndicate madness.
She thought of the time that she held her mother above the toilet and felt an entirely new low feeling in her body.
She picked up the phone again. "I can do this," she whispered to herself. Her fingers shook as she pressed in the phone number.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Nina?"
"No, this is Katy. ...I don't think Nina can talk right now."
"Get her," Demona asked.
"I---"
"Please..."
The person on the other line grumbled and paused. She heard rustling and soft words. A coughing noise full of rattling came to the phone, "...Hello?"
"Nina?"
"Yulianna? Oh, God, I didn't think you'd call. It's so nice to hear your beautiful voice." Nina's voice was soft and rattled, not like it had been when Demona had left. It was so different.
"Don't flatter me, Nina. I want to know why you called me."
"To talk to you, Anna."
"Bull. You have never wanted to just 'talk.' What do you want from me Nina?" The words were harsh and angry, and Demona couldn't believe she was standing up for herself this way.
"I'm your mother---"
"You kidnapped me!"
"You would have died---"
"You should have let me!"
An aggravated sigh and then an angry coughing retching noise. Demona could hear Katy conversing with Nina. Nina sounded like she was shaking her off and then came back on the line.
"Where'd you get my number, Nina?"
"I have my ways," Nina replied. "...You changed your name?"
"I did."
"Demona Launce...I like it."
"I didn't change it because you would like it," Demona hissed sharply, biting back her spite.
"No," Nina admitted; she was quiet. "...I have news."
"Like what?"
"I'm sick."
"How sick?"
"AIDS sick."
Demona choked. She felt odd tears prick her eyes in pain as she listened to the inevitable truth of a crack junkie that she had longed to hear. "...AIDS...?"
"Yes, Yulianna, AIDS. ...Full blown."
"How long?"
"I've known since about a month ago. ...I also have pneumonia."
"Sweet God..." Demona croaked. She pulled herself into a fetal position; faintly listening to her mother's rattled breathing.
"Where are you?"
"At a hospice on Marylyn Avenue."
"That's about fifteen minutes from here."
"Please, Yulianna, I don't want to die alone."
"It's okay, Nina. I'll be there."
"I love you, Yulianna."
Demona cringed and hung up the phone.
More lies.
***
It had taken weeks of planning and a failed suicide attempt for Yulianna to realize that her life was spiraling down to nothing. She'd have to start a life anew if there was any chance that she could live with herself. Yulianna had nothing with her, save the mental anguish and faint scars on her wrists. There was no way she could get from New York to California without anything.
Nina had hid sixteen tiny bags of coke beneath her cot and had left it there without a thought and went out to be with her new boyfriend. Yulianna took it and left. She began her life from there, hoping she'd acquire something for a new life.
The ride across the country was seedy. Every couple of hours, she had to find a new trucker, and new excuse to get in their cab. But she enjoyed the travelling. Every four hours, there was a dramatic change in scenery, which kept her transfixed in her dream world. She didn't care what happened to Nina at this point, Yulianna was now 21 and she was old enough to take care of herself. She always slept with one eye open, always watching to make sure the truckers wouldn't harass her.
The only other possession she had was the wishing and the praying that somewhere else it would be different. She listened quietly and solemnly to the trucker's stories about their families and wished that she had a family of her own to share funny anecdotes about. Someday, maybe she would.
***
The hospice was cozy, but there was the conspicuous smell of death. There were signs and flowers and hopeful posters, but behind them all was the truth---no one left alive. The walls were covered with pictures of the "Faithfully Departed," each person smiling out past their illness/pain and into the camera lens. The pictures were across from the main desk where two nurses arduously worked on preparing people as comfortably as possible for their own deaths.
After what Demona had just read this place was the nearest thing to heaven for those about to die.
Demona watched in a dumbed stupor as a family came out of one of the far rooms, clinging to one another, weeping. They had faced of pain that offered her to join them in their misery.
But you don't understand, Demona screamed, she never loved me, she only used me!
"May I help you," a nurse asked as Demona approached the desk. She was no older than she was and she looked ragged: like she had been running around catching falling vases that would only break anyway. She looked like hell, and then again, Demona probably did, also.
"I'm looking for Nina Grigorevny."
"Ah yes, room 12," the nurse said. "By the way I am Nurse Hathaway."
"Demona Launce."
"We have so many AIDS patients here, Miss Launce, but by far, Nina is probably the one who has the most hope."
Hope? Something didn't add up. "Are we talking about the same person?"
"Are we?"
Room 12 was a plain room: there were no flowers, no cars, and no well-wishers. It was pitiful.
Demona pressed a hand to her mouth, pushing back tears as she saw her frail "mother" lay back in the pillows. Her skin was so ashen the veins (though collapsed from drug use) were prominent through the skin, and Demona could hear her breathing. Her eyes were sunken and her lips were pursed, it made her look like a horrific ghost.
"Yulianna," Nina rasped in person for the first time in seven years.
"Ma---Nina?"
"Come sit with me," Nina said, extending a bruised hand with a feeble smile. Demona didn't take it, but she did sit down.
Katy spoke softly, "She's got a high fever and her breathing has become strained; she's taken a turn for the worse."
Demona looked up from Nina; her background in medicine told her where this was going. "How long has she got?"
Katy looked over at Nina who nodded. "Only hours."
Demona pressed her hand farther to her mouth. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, but now Demona couldn't bear to watch her mother die.
"My name is Demona now and I have become a different person that Yulianna Jarkov. ...I can't forgive you for those years ago, you know that," Demona whispered, "but I cannot allow you to die alone."
"I can't ask you for your forgiveness, Demona, but only from God. I just want you here with me."
Demona let a tear fall down her cheek---the first in years. Nina had taken her when Nina was seventeen. Now, only forty-five and Nina was dead. There could have been time for them to try to make amends, but hours weren't enough to reconcile twenty years of the past. Why?
"Please don't cry," Nina begged. "You do not love me, I know that."
Demona battled her tears, but didn't deny Nina's point. There were so many years of pain that Demona could never believe the lie that Nina offered forth.
"Why did you do it?"
Nina sighed, "So many reasons back then: they were all legitimate, too. Now, they are nothing more than ashes of passion that I once knew."
"What could have been so important?"
Nina looked stricken, "I loved you from the moment I saw you, I wanted nothing more than to have you lighting up my life I wanted to care for you in the worst way."
"And your idea of care was taking me out of Russia, beating and pimping me," Demona hissed.
"It was the drugs," Nina admitted.
Demona gave an angry sigh and walked to the windows, avoiding the accusing look from Katy. "How many others have you infected?"
"I don't know."
"Do you feel guilty that you have killed so many people?"
"Enough!" shouted Katy, who flew at Demona. "She's dying, can't you see that?"
"And finally leaving me alone," muttered Demona in a voice too low for Nina to hear.
Katy slapped Demona.
Demona grabbed Katy with both hands at her neck. She could barely contain herself to not break it; she instead held her fast.
"If you ever touch me again, I will break your neck. You don't know me; you don't know my past with Nine and all the pain she has given me. I wouldn't risk it, understand?"
Katy nodded and coughed hard. Demona let her go and Katy bent over, regaining her breath.
Nina looked at Demona with a stricken face, "Demona?"
"Don't try to understand me, Nina," Demona honestly requested. "It happened after I ran away."
***
Just when things were supposed to get better, they got worse. The boat ride to Russia took months. With the drugs handed over as some freak currency, Yulianna Jarkov gained hidden passage over the Pacific Ocean on a boat named The Czarina.
The passage wasn't safe. Yulianna was 21 and alone for three months on a ship full of men. The officers figured no one could hear her scream.
She didn't care anymore, she was on her knees for all of them, over and over again, and giving them every pleasure they could want. She was in the captain's bed whenever he wanted so that the other sailors wouldn't go any farther than blowjobs.
She had known her first pregnancy within the first two months of her trip, but the captain forced her to abort the fetus; and there was no way the captain would ever have admitted that he had an illegitimate child to some American whore when he had a wife at home. Yulianna didn't cry for the baby that never was. The only pain she felt in her body was of the self-induced abortion.
In Russia, she was free from Nina and all the pain that came wrapped up in the package. There was a possibility for a new life in her homeland. And that was what drove her to wake up each morning, despite the obvious holding her back.
Things had changed since she was there last. Russia in its new struggling Capitalist economy was a weak answer to America's wealth. There were no jobs for Yulianna to find. Being poor in Russia was worse than being poor and homeless in America. No one offered her a place to sleep at night or food.
Prostitution was the only option. There were so many government officials willing to pay for a night of high-priced sex without the nagging after. For a while it was the only thing Yulianna knew. She had become quite skilled in the area, though she was not proud of that: it made her feel dirtier than when Isaac had raped her. Another pregnancy and the fear of AIDS were enough to make her stop, despite the fact that she was poor.
She began to go door to door, begging for food. It was a hopeless endeavor, but she needed to feed herself and the baby. (And then soon after, the baby miscarried after two weeks from the coat hanger abortion she had given herself on the Czarina.)
Her last try was a large home on the rich side of the city. Chances were that the man had gained an upper hand with privatization before Communist Russia fell.
Shaky hands knocked on an expensive door. She was so weak and hungry, and her body ached from loosing the second child.
"Hello?" The man who answered the door was about 30, with light skin and hair. He was as lean as a beanpole, but well muscled. His eyes looked over her with concern, eyeing the bruises and her uncomfortable stance. Yulianna almost fell in love with him right then.
"Please sir, I need work. I'll earn whatever keep you can offer me."
He regarded her quietly, knowing what she needed. "Please, come in: you need medical attention first."
"Thank you..."
"I am Vitaly Viyatkin."
"Yulianna Jarkov..." she trailed off as she was enamored with his wealth. Yulianna had never known anything other than her cot and her clothes. Vitaly was wealthy beyond Yulianna's wildest dreams. The warmth in the house was enough for her to curl up and go to sleep.
***
But she never had to sleep on the floor. Vitaly had given her a place to stay. Never as hired help, but as a daughter and confidant.
Then he was a lover to her. It had happened more suddenly than anything that Yulianna had ever encountered had.
"Yulianna," Vitaly asked from the edge of her bed. He had taken her hand gently and looked at her with his piercing eyes.
"Vitaly," she responded with curiosity.
"I'm not going to ask you about your past, I know that you want to forget it more than anything else, but I want to be a part of your future. I want to be your lover." His body met hers and for a fleeting moment, Yulianna felt the warmth of a love that didn't involve drugs or abuse.
He loved her harder and so much more than she had ever known from anyone. It was so much more that she could ever hope for. He was never harsh or quick to judge: he accepted the fact that she had never loved anyone, and so he moved her slowly into their relationship. He was always forgiving and nurturing.
He had filled her body with hope and love.
---And opened torrential floodwaters.
***
"Demona?" Nina's voice was nothing more that a hollow whisper.
There was so much pain in Nina's voice that Demona sat back down and buried her head in the warm bedsheets. She felt Nina place a hand on the back of her head.
"What did you do when you were gone?"
"Maybe things are better left unspoken."
Nina nodded. Her body was wracked with coughs and while Demona held her up, Katy cleared Nina's throat of blood and mucus, almost unaware that she had AIDS. Demona wept at Nina seemed to flounder for breath.
"...Have you a job here in the United States?" she gasped.
"Nina," Katy looked pained. Was there any chance that Katy and her "mother" were lovers?" Demona didn't know.
"No, Katy. I barely know my Yulianna: I can't die without knowing my lover's daughter---my daughter."
"Please..." Demona begged. No more lies, Nina, you're dying in your bed and you are still lying to me.
"My job...?"
***
Yulianna enrolled in military school as a med student. It was that rigorous training and rigidity that she had needed. She excelled at it, and it was what she wanted so badly---someone who cared about her success.
There was no chance of her ever going to be on the front, but there was the chance she could be a military nurse.
In her fourth year, a man who would change her life approached her.
"May I sit," an old man asked. He was American, but he spoke broken Russian.
"Sure," Yulianna replied in his tongue. He must have been surprised that she had a perfect knowledge of American. He lit a cigarette.
"You are training to be in the military?"
"I am," she affirmed.
"Are you willing for a job that could give you some action?"
Yulianna looked at him: what sort of action? Id this was some sort of sexual favor, Yulianna would knock this bastard on his ass. "I suppose: what are you offering?"
"If you finish training at the military school and graduate, we'll hire you. When do you graduate?"
"Wait a minute: who's 'we'?"
"A small group of government workers in America."
Yulianna nodded; and job in the United States government was worth having, "I will be graduating in two weeks."
"We'll be waiting," the man said. "How shall we address you?"
"Yulianna Jarkov."
"You have to change it for US papers; there's red tape to get through."
She nodded and thought earnestly, thinking about a new identity that could finally enable her to she d the old one: "Demona Launce." Demona for Desdemona, the Shakespearean heroine who died for her innocence, Ophelia (the middle name) for Ophelia of "Hamlet" who went mad because of her life falling apart; and Launce for Eduard Launce, a Frenchman she'd whored for who had encouraged her afterwards to be something better and giving her a thousand American dollars to get herself started in a new life. She owed herself to those three, hoping that Eduard would see his request someday filled.
"My name is CGB Spender. Welcome to The Syndicate, Miss Launce."
***
Nina had grown silent as Demona had reminisced. Now, seeing Nina so vulnerable scared Demona and her heart churned in absolute fear. "Nina?"
Nina's eyes opened slowly and then fluttered up to Demona. They were glassy, but their still showed some recognition beyond the drugs that kept her from feeling any pain. "I changed when you left. It convinced me. I quit shooting up and got myself into a program. ...I guess I had hoped that meant that you would come back."
"No," Demona admitted regretfully. "I didn't know you had gone that far. I would have been proud enough to have come back to see you, though."
"I met Katy in the rehab hospital. She was going through the same things as I was."
Katy looked a little embarrassed but she smiled at Demona, "Nina is a good person when she isn't high. She accepted God into her life and let His love consume her."
Demona nodded, although she wasn't sure whether or not this was a ploy for her to become a born-again Christian. There had been no God in her life; it had always been her own will that had kept her alive. God was someone who had turned a blind eye on her so long ago, and there was still resentment in her heart that Demona had to deal with.
"Nina always spoke so lovingly about you," Katy offered.
"What?"
"Honestly, she always wanted to thank you for helping her during your teenage years...when you had a godly compassion."
"Don't relate me to God, Katy," Demona asked. "I am not like God; He always loves when all I can feel is hate."
"God also forgives His people," Nina said, touching Demona's cheek. "I know He forgives me, and if me, then He will forgive anyone."
"Nina, I...."
"Thank you for caring for me back then."
"I...you...my...moth," Demona stammered.
"Yulianna," her voice had fallen further.
"Nina?"
"I'm so sorry. I took your life from you."
Demona choked on her tears.
"Our father...who art in heaven...hall...hall...be thy name," Nina wheezed.
Demona was shocked. She had never heard a word of prayer or any word so lovingly from Nina's mouth. Katy began to pray with her and Demona looked at them both with an alarmed stupor. Demona couldn't pray, she couldn't go to a God who surely couldn't forgive her, no matter what Nina said. This was it, it was going to be the last thing the Nina would say before her lungs collapsed under their own sodden weight, Demona just wanted Nina to know peace.
Nina's eyes fluttered then shut, and Nina stopped murmuring.
"Nina? Nina? …Mama?" Demona's voice was hysterical. "Mama!"
"She's in a coma," Katy said, tears streaming down her face.
"I never forgave her," Demona whispered, holding Nina's weak hand. "There was so much that I wanted to say to her. I wanted to forgive her."
Katy placed a hand on Demona's shoulder, "She never expected you to forgive her. She knew that there was too much that she had done to you to ever expect forgiveness from you. She's dying in peace having you here."
Demona shook her head in disbelief. "I...loved her, in an abused child loving blindly, I loved her. ...She was the only mother I ever knew."
"And she loved you, Demona. Drugs change people beyond their wildest nightmares. There were things that Nina related to me that she never got to tell you: she wanted to turn back time and be a mother to you. She wished on God's holy head that she could have watched you grow into the beautiful woman that you are now standing in front of her," Katy sobbed. "She dies now in peace, having seen the woman you became."
"The woman I became..." Demona shuddered, "I am not a woman, I am a monster; created from the streets and brought up on shattered dreams and living nightmares. She wouldn't have liked who I became."
"And what did you become, Demona?"
"I...have a job that...kills innocent people and will destroy themselves along with the rest of us," Demona sighed; she knew that answer would sound like she herself was on drugs, but it slipped from her mouth nonetheless. "I can't leave."
"Time heals all wounds," Katy replied. "Give yourself time and you'll see the truth."
Demona took Nina's hand, it was too frighteningly frail. "I learned to live without you, but you always followed me. Maybe it was a sign. ...Why did it have to end like this?"
Nina said nothing.
"Would you like to go home, Demona? All there is here is to watch her die," Katy offered.
It was a tempting offer. This last hour of reminiscing and sitting with Nina left Demona emotionally drained. There was nothing more to say to Nina, nothing that would make any more of a difference now. But somehow, there was no way that Demona could leave and forget Nina: as much as she wanted to try, she couldn't leave.
It was hours later that Nina Grigorevny passed away. Demona watched in pain as Nina took a last breath and let it slide away like a bird on an updraft.
Then she was gone.
Demona watched in a dream as Katy discussed funeral arrangements for Nina. Demona could only stare at the woman who had caused her so much pain over the years.
She stopped at the chapel. The wood cross with the figure of Jesus on it looked at her silently. Demona sat in a pew and looked at that cross, staring at the carved details; each lock of hair, each thorn that disappeared into the Christ's flesh, the small tunic around his midsection (the only thing that kept Him in some dignity), the pierced flesh at his side....
"I can't mourn," she offered the cross, "After all this, I can't mourn. ...Can I be forgiven?"
The Christ looked back at her, offering her a silent answer.
"Please, if I believe in you, will you believe in me?"
***
"Vitaly?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm leaving," Yulianna said. "I've been offered a job in America, and I have taken it."
"If it makes you happy?"
"I'm hoping it will."
"Then you must go. I believe in you, Yulianna, and I believe that you will find something equivalent to peace. …I love you."
"I love you, too Vitaly. ...Thank you for believing in me."
"I have never thought anything else."
***
If Vitaly---human and not divine---could believe in her, then the Son of God could also. As she left, she picked up a wooden cross on a cord. The placard above the crosses said they were the crafts of Michael Orville, who died a only a week ago of cancer, he made them so that people could know his faith.
Demona held the cross tightly in her fist, wishing and willing to believe: hoping that Nina had finally gone to a better place, hoping that Nina had found peace.
***
Demona sat again in her apartment, fingering the wooden cross. She looped it across the famed picture of her and Vitaly---the only memory that she could hold on to her only lover. That lover was slowly being replaced by other people; by other things that had more importance now in The Syndicate.
She was so messed up. In The Syndicate, where she thought that she'd finally found happiness, she had found empty dreams.
She couldn't leave The Syndicate unless she died.
...Maybe she too should start on drugs. No, she couldn't watch herself spiral into hell---again.
Maybe it was only a matter of days before she decided to floss with her S&W lady pistol.
Nina had found peace, now why couldn't Demona? She felt a streak of jealousy at her newly deceased mother. If her mother had found solace after all those years, there had to be hope for her.
***
Demona arrived at the meeting place within two weeks of her mother's death. She could smell the old people in the cramped sedan. Spender didn't notice---or care---that Demona's voice was hushed with pain.
"How was your reading?"
"Sickening," Demona replied.
"Well, you seem to have a better reaction than most."
Demona sighed and stared out the window into the park. Children of three, four and five played on the primary-colored, government-funded jungle gym. Her stomach turned involuntarily. She watched as the children laughed and teased, running and jumping. Would her own children have been brothers/sisters/brother and sister? Demona shook the thoughts away and looked back at Spender. "What is my mission?"
"Get disks from London: they are important. Your ticket and syllabus are in here," he handed her another folder in exchange for the one she had.
Demona nodded and exited the car and it roared way. A baseball rolled from the playground and hit her well-dressed foot. She picked it up and handed it to the child who had come after it. She handed the ball into the hands of a smiling child who thanked her profusely. The mother, once wary of her child going up to a perfect stranger, smiled at her in thanks. There were still good people out there.
...Good people....
No way out.
-End-