A week after Lia's sister-who I later learned was named Jada-had her baby, Taji, I was beginning the long and exhausting process of pulling myself out of the depression hole I had sunk into. Regardless of my approaching satisfaction with life, Jack, my brother, would never be forgotten. His frail fingers, spasmodically twitching while he was dragged across the glistening tile floors in Manticore would never be forgotten. His words, "He's not me, Ben. Nobody ever will be for you. You have to accept the fact that I'm not coming backā¦alive, that is," would never be forgotten. Yet, I was somehow managing-with frequent difficulties-to bridge the gap Jack's departure had left inside of me, and to fill it instead with power and blood for the Blue Lady.
I visited the dark alleys of the most dangerous parts of town, where I was nearly mugged on numerous occasions by a pack of drug addicts with extra big knives, all during my desperate searches for a soul who might have faith in something greater than a gun. I had discovered one decent person, but, to my dismay, he was murdered the next day for the exact reason I was planning to recruit him: strong faith. So, I was once again left without payment to Her, leaving me even more irritable than when I had originally begun.
One night during the middle of my second week stay, I was mixing up a canister of black spray paint I had stolen from the garbage when Lia meandered in my room; I had barely heard her enter over the noise of my rapid shaking. The little steel ball clicking against the sides of the can seemed so unimportant compared to catcalling hookers and screaming men on the other side of the building. Nevertheless, I continued to rapidly shake, hoping that the paint would still be usable, and perhaps the noise would drown Lia out.
She flopped down on my rickety bed beside of me, grazing my jeans with her stringy hair and grinned up at me through round little teeth. "What doin' Ben?" she asked in her typical crisp little voice.
Since Taji had been born, Lia had begun to spend more time around me as if she actually admired me as a big brother type of person. She was constantly visiting my room merely to babble about her life in the slums of New York City. From her mouth, I heard words wiser than Lydecker could have ever given us about survival of the strongest, and I also heard horrors that I thought the pulse had destroyed. Overall, I had become quite attached to the kid-even if I would continually deny it, brushing off her warm presence like a sugary snack that burned a person's mouth and needed to be discarded-no matter how delicious it tasted.
"Nothing much," I muttered, giving the can one final snap of my wrist as I stood up. Striding over to the opposite wall, I rested my hand thoughtfully against my chin, feeling stubble, several days old, prickle against my knuckles. Yet, if anyone noticed how animalistic I looked, they didn't say anything. Besides, the hookers still liked me-and my never-ending supply of money-so I supposed I couldn't be that ugly.
"You paint?" Lia asked, rolling over onto her belly to prop her chin up on the heel of her hands.
"Uh-huh."
"Paint what?"
"Some words," I responded, unwilling to tell her about my own childhood. She had her own problems to deal with, and they certainly weren't about me and how my own insanity would eventually eat me alive.
"Can you tell me what 'bout?"
"What the words are about?"
"Yup," she grinned through dark hair. "I want to know what words say. I can no read."
"Well," I sighed, knowing that if I didn't tell her, she would continue to relentlessly pester me until I did. So, I reached up, ignoring the bloody stains of murder on the wall and pressed the button on the can, and sprayed thick black paint into letters.
"This word says, 'duty'-"
"What does it mean?"
"Duty? It means a requirement of some sort...something a person is supposed to do. Got it?" I asked, to which she nodded, and I continued talking. "Right here," I said, giving the can another hissing squeeze of the button, "says, 'discipline', which is like training. Punishment." I noticed her instinctive flinch as undoubtedly flashbacks of her abusing parents bit at her, so I quickly changed the subject. "And last of all, this word reads 'mission'-an order given, or maybe a place you're supposed to arrive at." Then, standing back to admire my work, I mused, more to myself than Lia, "Duty, discipline and mission...that's what they say."
Lia paused, glancing from me to the adulterated wall before she rolled off the bed and padded over to the wall, letting her bare feet slap weakly against the grimy floorboards. She bent her thin neck and stared upward at the words slightly above her head. Then, without warning, she reached up, stretching as high as she could, and slapped her thin fingers against the inky paint and watched it seep around her cuticles before pulling her hand away with a sickening suction sound. She gazed in perplexity at the palm of her hand and pressed her lips together in confusion. After a moment of silence as we both watched beads of liquid onyx drip off her skin, she looked up at me with confusion smeared across her face.
"Why?" she asked, still holding her messy hand outward in the same offering position.
"Why what?"
"Why do you paint words? They good?"
I paused, taken aback before forcing an almost sinister smile, remembering what the words really meant to me. "Yeah, they're good."
"What for?" She continued to stare at her blackened palm, more confused by a simple smear of paint than by gang beatings in her home. Her curiosity with such an asinine object as ink was beginning to trouble me; I couldn't tell what she was planning to do, and children with a plan disturbed me, not to mention children without one.
"They remind me of who I am," I answered her.
"You're Ben."
"Yeah, but..." I trailed off, figuring it best not to expose the Blue Lady. Expose everything I had ever worked for throughout my ten years in the horrid real world. Expose my nightmares and demons that ate me piece by piece in silence every night.
Expose what I really was.
"But what, Ben?"
"Nothing."
"No. You say something."
"Look, it was nothing," I snapped and tightly capped the spray can, pushing past her. Harshly, I plopped down on my bed, throwing the container off to the other side of the room with an irritated flick of my wrist. Running fingers through my oily hair, I stared downward at the dingy floor with my elbows resting on my knees. "Just get out of here," I told her angrily. "Just get out."
There was a pause as she stood there, examining the three individual words I had written on the wall. Finally, she strolled over to where I sat, causing me to look up and meet her fiery little eyes; she would not "just get out".
She held her hand out to me, fingers pointed at the cracked ceiling, and palm facing me as if displaying her hand where the black paint was steadily drying in the creases of her skin, leaving an ashen blemish across her yellow tinted skin. Perplexed, I examined her, watching her eyes dart back and forth, and I wondered what kind of bizarre game she wanted me to play with her. Then, with her other hand, she grabbed me by the wrist so that my right hand mirrored hers.
"I thought I told you to go," I said, but my words held no meaning for her as she continued in the task she had planned.
Gently, but firmly, she placed her paint-coated palm against mine so that we were locked together by our skin. Her thin little fingers disappeared around the backside of mine, and I realized just how physically powerful I was compared to her. From my brutal hands, I could have snapped her neck without even blinking. Yet, I didn't, and instead focused on what was happening to my hand.
The black paint oozed out between my fingers, leaving cool little trails of dark streams that slowly skied down the back of my hand before disappearing into my gray shirt sleeve. Her eyes held mine, daring me, for once, to be the submissive one as our palms kissed against one another in my room that seemed to be cut off from the rest of the world.
"Lia," I asked, "what are you doing?"
"It just paint," she whispered, ignoring how it dribbled over our cracked skin and bonded us together like blood relatives. "And, Ben? You can't hide behind paint forever."
