Chapter 57

I woke up feeling really peaceful, perhaps even happy, maybe perfect if it weren't for the headache that I had. And I didn't know where I was right away. It was dark. I was in a room and it was dark. And I was in a bed.

I sat up and rubbed my head, then remembered the fire. My heart started pounding and I reached over to see if there was a table, maybe a lamp. I felt a hard wood side table, and slid my hand over it, finding luck. I ran my hand up the lamp, found the switch, and clicked it on.

What met my eyes was Mark's house. One of the guestrooms. I'd been there a bunch of times, not recently. Amber and I stayed here sometimes rather than a hotel when we were in the area. After the confusion of why I was there passed I remembered my initial concern and looked at my arm.

Unscathed.

I frowned, confused, and rubbed it, seeing that the scars on the back of my right hand were gone, ones that had been there the whole time. My heart pounded and I pushed myself out of bed, wondering how I'd gotten there and where I'd gotten the clothes. I was fully clothed, in red and black clothes, but more elegant than anything I would wear on my own. I don't know. It was strange.

The smell of cigarettes filled the room, which also confused me. I frowned and touched my forehead in stress, hating that I didn't know what was going on. But under my fingers I just felt smooth skin, unmarred.

"What the fuck?" I asked out loud. Both hands reached up to touch my face, and it was something I've never felt in my adult life. Smooth, regular, untouched. If I hadn't been so confused I would've been smiling as I ran out of the room and down the hall, knowing my way around even though the lights were off as I ran into the bathroom. I smashed the light switch on the wall and leaned down against the counter, staring in shock at my reflection in the mirror. It was almost horrific to me, such shock. I thought maybe that I was dead, in heaven or something.

My face was perfect.

So often in my life, even since I was still a kid, I'd wondered what I would've looked like if the fire had never happened. And right then I knew. And I was very pleased. Even if I had been ugly to everyone else, it didn't matter just then. I had a face. It was so…gratifying.

For the first time I saw the resemblance between me and Claudette, equally my resemblance to my mother. All the ways that I thought they'd looked alike, it had been through me. My fingers ran down over my cheekbone, down to my jaw. I was smiling.

"Daddy?" I heard a voice and turned, brought out of the trance. A girl was standing in the doorway, maybe nine or ten years old, a younger boy standing behind her. The boy was kind of hiding in the shadows of the hallway so I couldn't see what he looked like. But I could see the girl. I smiled and knelt down in front of her. She was so small…just about as tall as me when I was on one knee. Dark hair, green eyes. She looked like me, like my mother. Like Amber. Tears rushed to my eyes and I couldn't keep the smile off my face.

"What is it, baby?" I asked her.

"I couldn't sleep," she looked like she was going to cry. I reached over and rubbed her shoulder. My hand was huge next to her. And not scarred. I was really happy for that time. And I was talking to my daughter. And she was talking back. Again I wondered if I was dead, if this was some strange Heaven…in Mark's house. The latter part of the idea made me doubt it.

"Aww, what's wrong?" I felt really bad for her. She was so delicate, so helpless.

"It's your fault," she said, and started to cry. My stomach turned and I pulled my hand away from her, afraid that I was all-too-familiar with what was going on.

I didn't know what to do. "Claudie, don't cry," I said, desperately, and looked up to see where Armand was. He was backing away from me, to the other side of the hall, bumping into the wall to make him stop. I reached out for Claudette and she jumped back, into the darkness. "No, Claudette, wait," I said, and stood up, I could barely see out in the hallway, where she'd joined her brother, and stepped out of the bathroom to find them. All I could hear was her crying, and then footsteps. Small, child footsteps, the two sets, running away from me. And I ran after.

"Claudie? Armand? Wait!" I called out to them desperately. From the glow of the bathroom light I could just barely make out their shapes, Armand having reddish kind of hair, the vague traces of Claudette's white nightgown. And they ran so damn fast…I really had to make an obvious effort to keep up with them. The smell of cigarettes grew stronger as I ran down the hall after them, down the stretch of the hall. It seemed much longer than it actually was, and I noticed that the further we went, the more the ground beneath my feet changed. From wood into a thick carpet. It felt eerily familiar to me as we reached the end, a door. They'd already passed through. A crack of light came from the bottom.

The fear was eating a hole in my stomach. I pushed the door open after I'd caught my breath, finding myself in Claudette's nursery in our house in Vermont. I saw the door that led into the hall, and turned to see where I'd come in from.

All that I could see was the plain wall, light blue wallpaper, spilled over with pictures of teddy bears and rocking horses. I touched it, ran my hand over it to see that there was nothing there. I frowned and turned back around.

Claudette and Armand were standing shoulder-to-shoulder right in front of me. The whole room was covered in splotches of vibrant red blood.

"It's your fault," Claudette said again. Dark circles began to appear around her eyes, brown, then purple, her eyes themselves becoming a misty kind of light blue. Armand just stared me, not saying a word, and started to bleed from his mouth. I started to shake, and took a step back, hitting the wall. "This is all your fault, Daddy."

She backed away from me, over to the crib that she'd slept in as a baby. I watched her in rapt fascination, not knowing what she was going to do. The white rail of it was red, the top smeared as if someone had been grabbing onto it with blood on their hands, individual droplets rolling down the bars like candle wax. Or tears. She walked crookedly, wobbling a little as she lifted one of her small arms, tilting her head and without looking pointing up at the ceiling. She had one of those music things that babies have, that hang over the cribs. That you tug on to make play. I didn't know what they were called. Amber loved them. She thought they were cute. The one Claudette had was fuzzy and had little stars and clouds and moons hanging from it. Those too, were red, and not smiling anymore, but making horrid faces, like they were in incredible pain.

"I can't sleep. Make music," she said.

I looked down at Armand, feeling kind of threatened as he just stared at me. He was so small, and looked kind of like Mark. Kind of like our father, kind of like Amber. I didn't see myself in his hollow, vacant eyes as he stared up, blood dripping from his lips. He didn't move at all, didn't even breathe. Cautiously I passed him, my eyes not leaving as I approached Claudette, her arm still up, finger pointed and fixed on the hanging music box. Slowly she put it back at her side as I reached up and pulled down on the cord.

She smiled as the music started, something very peaceful and subdued and childish. I choked back a sob and she began to laugh at me. I glared at her with hatred.

"Metaphor for a missing moment. Pull me into your perfect circle. One womb, one shape, one resolve. Liberate this will to release us all," it sang. She just laughed at me. Armand joined her again and did the same, spitting blood all over me as he did it.

"What?" I demanded of them. Claudette pointed her finger again, at me. Armand's blood was getting on her nightgown.

She sang along with the song, high-pitched and creepy. "Gotta cut away, snip away, slip away and sever this…"

Hatred ran through me as I mumbled down at them, saying what they wanted me to, completing the chorus. "Umbilical residue that's keeping me from killing you…"

"And from pulling you down with me in here. I can almost hear you scream."

They turned and ran away again, and I was about to not even follow when I looked at my surroundings.

Pink carpet. Ruined.

A white rocking horse, splotched in red.

Various teddy bears, soaked in crimson.

A stack of building blocks that was dripping and disgusting.

I couldn't stand to be there so I chased them out of the room. I hated the mind tricks they were playing on me, or that I was playing on myself. I couldn't tell, but I hated that I found myself standing at the top of the stairs of Paul's basement. And there were standing at the bottom, still laughing at me.

"Give me one more medicated peaceful moment," I thought, along with the song.

The little fucking brats, trying to lure me down there. I wanted to go down and kill both of them.

But I knew I couldn't. I couldn't. They were my children.

"Umbilical residue that's keeping me from killing you…"

"Fuck you," I called down at them, and followed, giving in.

I wanted to vomit as I did so, the keen memories that I felt. The way the temperature changed as you went further down, how it got colder, how the steps creaked and felt like they'd break. And as I had trouble handling that enough, it was my own fucking children who were luring me down, laughing at me, making fun of me…my own fucking children. I wanted to kill them.

Claudette's laughter was so loud, so piercing as I stepped down onto the floor. I didn't even see her, she wasn't around anymore. But I could smell smoke. Not just cigarette smoke, real smoke. I held my stomach, remembering the night of the fire.

I had been sleeping when I woke up, because I was choking. I pushed out of bed and walked out into the hall, the door directly across from me open and revealing that my brother wasn't around. His bed was empty. He was gone. I could hear the fire, crackling, eating away at the house.

Everything felt really hot. I was choking and couldn't see very much as I ran down the hall to our parents room, throwing the door open to see that the fire had already touched that part. My father was in there, I could see him, and he was screaming, flailing against the flames. He didn't even see me, and between us lay a massive wall of heat. I watched him fall down, clawing at his arms, his clothes on fire, his skin on fire, his hair. He never knew that I was watching him as he fell silent, as I sobbed for him, standing in the doorway and too scared to move.

That was when I heard my mother calling me. She'd gone outside, come back in for me. "Kane? Kane where are you?" she was screaming. From the bottom of her lungs she screamed so that her voice was rough and cracking. I couldn't stop crying as I turned away from the flames eating what was left of my father's body and ran back down the hall, the smoke everywhere, blinding. It stung my eyes, made me cry even more.

"KANE!!!" she was really screaming. She didn't hear me. I called for her, too, and couldn't see anything as I reached out for her, just knew he was near because she started to answer me, because her voice got closer.

"Oh god, Kane," she said, and held me. She was crying, too, and pulled me down onto the floor, under the smoke, telling me to try to breathe. I had inhaled smoke, I was coughing and couldn't concentrate, felt disoriented. When I caught my breath I looked up and saw that a wall of the flames had blocked off the other end of the hallway and trapped up there. I started screaming in fear, and she was crying silently. I didn't understand then, I know now the kind of pain she was in. She was crying softly, bitterly, because she knew she wasn't going to make it out of there. She was a woman who wasn't going to see the light of another day and so she just grabbed onto her son and held him and didn't say a word.

I kept asking her what was happening, asking her why we were just sitting there. She just shushed me and told me how much she loved me, how beautiful I was. She didn't seem afraid, that whole time, until the ceiling started to cave. It was cracking above, and chunks of wood and drywall were falling down from it. Finally one huge plank cracked down, landing right next to us, broke the floor boards beneath us. That was when she screamed, and clung to me as I had being clinging to her. Screams purely of fear, of horror and helplessness as we fell. I don't know what happened, I know that we fell. I know that I hit my head. I felt dizzy, couldn't see straight. Everything was flashing in front of me. A large board had landed on top of her, and her leg was broken. Compound fracture, blood everywhere. But she was still conscious, and crying, sobbing, and telling me to run away, telling me that she loved me and that she loved Mark and to tell him that. Her hair was splayed out all around her, curls shining, beautiful. She laid there helpless, telling me to run, cursing at me, telling me to get our of there, asking me why I wasn't leaving. I couldn't bring myself to. I saw her leg, bleeding. Saw the blood coming from her nose and from her lips. She'd broken teeth in the fall. And the board holding her down was splintered, dug into her so that blood pooled all around her. I was crying from fear and misery and physical pain as I watched her. I didn't even noticed that I was bleeding, too, didn't realize that there was blood pouring down over the side of my face.

What it took for me to really listen to her was when her hair caught fire. I saw the edges of it just kind of curl in quickly, like burning plastic, and get thin, turn brown and start sizzling and turn black. She was screaming and crying as the flames got closer to her scalp, then just took over her head. Her eyebrows burned, her eyelashes singed and seemed to just disappear. That was when I finally ran away, screaming.

I managed to get through the wrecked hallway without burning, images of both parents burning in my head, not knowing what to do, wishing that Mark would help me. He was my savior, always was. Even then he was, especially then, maybe. Because he was my big brother. He had that title, he had that thing about him that big brothers have, immortality. He was so untouchable. I remember that I screamed out his name as I neared the stairs.

That was when I tripped.

If it hadn't been for that I don't know what would've happened. I tripped on a piece of wood that had fallen down from the ceiling, fell down and hit my chin really hard on the floor. It cut open and I began to bleed all over the front of my shirt. That was when I realized that my head was bleeding, too. I touched my face and pulled my hands away completely red. The sight of my own blood frightened me to the extreme, and has ever since, especially when I've been wrestling. I was shaking so hard that I couldn't get back on my feet right away, just sat there screaming and freaking out and hysterical. The fire was all around me, the walls crumpling. A flaming board fell from the ceiling and landed on my right hand.

That's how I got that scar.

My hand was trapped beneath it, burning. I screamed more than I had before, if it was possible. My voice started to go.

It's a horrible feeling, to be burned. So few people really know it. It stings, and it hurts, and all you can see is red. And it never gets any better. It's like…when something stings, it'll sting for a few seconds and then stop. The burning never gets any better, it just get worse, it makes you feel that there's nothing there to burn anymore, that you're getting smaller and small just because the pain is so great. It just expands all over your body and hurts.

The board was too heavy for me to get off until it had burned down a little. By then I think I was in shock, and it didn't hurt so much, and I managed to kick the thing off of me.

My hand was disgusting.

The skin was hanging off it, nothing but red and gore, all surrounded by burned skin. There were pieces of the wood stuck all over, and ash. I screamed in horror at seeing it, though everything was starting to get numb. I'd lost so much blood and been so traumatized and hit my head so hard that things were starting not to hurt. I scrambled up to my feet and kept running, almost to the stairs when another board fell, swung down and hit me in the face. I fell down with it. It wasn't on fire but covered in orange embers.

Part of it went directly into my right eye. I tried to push it off of me but it was too heavy, resting right on my face, my head. There was nothing left of the wood to burn but it kindled my hair, and from there assaulted my face. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't cry anymore. I couldn't even feel it, just screamed and screamed and screamed. Everything hurt. Everything felt sweltering and hot.

At the time it didn't even occur to me that it would shape the rest of my life. I wasn't even thinking of it, wasn't thinking of anything. For some reason, though, I knew I wasn't going to die. I knew that I was going to get the thing off me when the time was right and get out of there. And after a few minutes, when the burning stopped a little, I was able to shove it away and get up and keep running.

I fell down the stairs, couldn't balance, and saw through the open front doors that fire trucks had just arrived. I watched them pull up the road, saw Mark crying and vomiting and freaking out on the far side of the front lawn. I reached out to call to him but I couldn't anymore. The board that had landed on me had burned my throat, I couldn't talk.

I couldn't even move, I was too paralyzed by the pain. I just stopped moving, tried for just a moment to let the pain calm. I saw through the eye that hadn't been burned, saw Mark, saw him freaking out and pointing towards the house and screaming at the firefighters. I reached out, my hand bigger than he was from my perspective. Over and over I mouthed his name, not sure if it was even coming out.

Finally the firefighters burst into the house. I remember that one of them took one look at me and said "Holy shit," before running over and scooping me up in his arms. He ran outside and I saw Mark rushing over. His face was red, puffy, wet. He was reaching out for me and people were holding him back as they put me in an ambulance.

It's funny how clearly I remember all of it. I don't know why I remember so much. I wish I didn't.

The memory has me sobbing, screaming, sitting down on the steps to Paul's basement, holding my head, my hair. I hate Mark for doing it, for setting that fucking fire. I hate Paul for torturing me, waiting till I was able to leave the hospital. The parts of my hair that had been burned and healed, as did the exterior of my neck, though I had problems speaking for years. I could've had speech therapy, fuck, I could've had psychological therapy if it hadn't been for Paul.

Then I wouldn't have been so upset all my life. I wouldn't have been so miserable.

But then again I also wouldn't have ever met Amber. So I can't know what to want. All I could do was remember.

The smell of the smoke thickened. I looked up and saw fire. I still heard Claudette laughing at me. My face started to itch and felt kind of tight, my hand felt the same way, and I looked down to see a series of wrinkles appear, slowly deepening to reform the scars. I couldn't do anything but sob, couldn't even bring myself to be angry at the little bitch that my daughter had become.

The flames surrounded me in a semi-circle, so that the only place I had to go was up the stairs. I was bitter towards how familiar it seemed as I stood and darted up the stairs, banging on the door and screaming for Mark.

"Mark!!" I screamed. "Mark, help me! Please, Mark, don't leave me here like this! MARK!!!"

It had happened several times, just like that, in the past. The first time Paul had locked me down there…minus the screaming, because my voice wasn't working yet. It had happened the first time I'd seen rats in the basement, when I was horrified and started to cry, though I learned to get used to them. The first few times I had nightmares, the first time it rained and the basement got flooded up to my knees.

I kept screaming for him, wondering where he was, hearing the fire and feeling it coming up behind me, the heat intensifying. "MARK PLEASE!!!" I was begging. That happened too. Because the first few times I cried for him he'd help me, then Paul would hurt him. Eventually he learned to ignore me, to turn his back. But sometimes…every once in a while if I was pained enough and loud enough he'd answer.

"WHERE ARE YOU??" I called. I pressed my ear up against the door to try to hear anything. I didn't hear him out in the hallway.

The flames were licking up at my heels. In desperation I began to throw my shoulder into the door, kicking at the fire and trying to keep moving so that it wouldn't burn me. After a few tries it cracked, and I was able to shove it open. When I stepped out into the hall all the fire stopped, and I was met again with the smell of cigarettes. It was so strong. I could even see the little thin trail of smoke that wound around. I followed it, thin white wispy fingers that curled around me, pulled me in.

It lead me to Paul's office. Someone was sitting at the desk chair, and it was turned away. As I walked in it slowly turned around, creaking. My knees felt weak and I managed to get to one of the other chairs so that I wouldn't fall to the floor as I finally fell.

Amber.

"Oh god, where have you been?" I asked her. She shrugged, and took a drag off a cigarette, narrowing her eyes at me for a moment before flicking ash into an ashtray. She slowly exhaled, the smoke dancing over her lips.

"Around."

"Since when have you smoked?" I asked her, confused. I really didn't care. Amber smoking a cigarette was better than no Amber at all.

"I've always smoked, silly. Where've you been?"

Again I felt overwhelmingly confused. "Amber?" I asked.

"No."

I just stared as she crushed the cigarette out and stood up, walking around the desk and staring down at me. She smelled like lilacs. I stared up at her, wide-eyed. "What the fuck is going on?" I asked her. She was humming Orestes, by A Perfect Circle. She even sang a line or two, eyes locked on mine. Someone else in Amber's body, a different soul behind her eyes.

"And I don't wanna feel this overwhelming hostility," she sang softly to me.

"What's going on??" I asked again, tightening my grip on the chair. She smiled really softly, the way people smile when they're in on a joke that you know nothing about. My stomach was flipping. Sweat was breaking out on my forehead.

She kissed her fore and middle fingers, the faintest smear of lipstick coming off, and kept on her smile as she pressed them up against my forehead, or third eye.

"It's not your time yet, Kane."

**

Hey sorry Krissi for not telling you about Lilac's pseudo-cameo :P :P :P I couldn't help it. Thank you, too. XD Because she belongs to you and all. XD Now review, fucker!! :P :P :P ::dances::

And haha I was thinking, to Susan and Lea- I bet Heaven is Mark's house for you two… :P

And Happy Birthday to the Rusty-duck!! :) Oh yay. ::sings::