Arc II

Chapter IX

(Mind the) Gap - Four Houses

"She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."

Haruki Murakami — Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

It had been eighteen days.

Eighteen goddamned days of just sitting around and simply doing nothing. Eighteen days of waiting for him, filled with lost, dead, empty hours.

Eighteen days - she had counted them, each and every single one of them – as she sat by the window every single night, all alone, worrying about the kid out there in the mountains; her brain anesthetized yet working overtime, saving all of her poisonous thoughts for the mercenary, fueled by his labyrinthine ways.

Knock, silence. Knock, knock, silence.

Knock, silence.

Knock, silence, knock.

Aalem had taught her that sequence composed by sounds and silences, it was the safe code she would wait every night to finally let the young boy in after a long day in the mountains – Alex walked to the door, hoping to find the Edenian kid on the other side but to her surprise, the only thing she saw was a large brown sack being thrown at her. Black, at last, was making an appearance.

She stepped back, the weight of her body completely unbalanced now, and the mercenary walked in – he delighted his eyes with the sight of her body struggling with the large bag filled with all the groceries he had brought for them, then he finally reached out his hands to help her, grinning unceasingly under his bandana.

As soon as her digits were free from the elaborated task they had been given, Alex slapped the cowboy – the palm of her hand turning red almost immediately, "how dare you?" she demanded, infuriated, finally channeling her contained anger towards the proper target.

The Edenian young man had been stationed in his surveillance spot in the mountains all day – now that the cold night had fallen upon the southwest region of the realm Black and the woman were alone, finally facing their own demons as they stood statically and awkwardly just a few steps away from each other; witnessing the cold chills running down their spines, making their eyes shiver and tremble, embedding them in a silent, almost deafening tension. An unbearable silence surrounded them – a crystal-like, immaculate silence, fragile and obsolete, for them to have and to hold, even if only briefly.

His face was completely shaken by her actions – his neck, driven by the inertia, acting as a gun recoiling after being fired, was slowly returning to its original position. His gaze, darkened and menacing was enough to make her see that he was upset.

"Congratulations on actually slapping me," Black snapped back quickly, the irony in his voice was unmistakable, the coldness and the indifference embedded in his tone were nearly annihilating her. "I remember the first time you tried to slap me in the face - you failed miserably," he added as he held her wrist firmly, his fingers almost buried in her skin, "I warn you, though, there won't be a third time."

Altered by his attitude, trying to get herself free from his tight grip, the woman continued:

"How dare you tell the boy all those things about me? You don't even know me; you don't know who I am!" an intensely enraged Alex shouted as Black walked in and closed the door behind him, finally releasing her.

"Quiet now, woman," his left hand, though airborne, was not threatening her - at least, not physically – it was firm, immobile; it was merely a beacon signaling her to be wise enough not to cross another line.

He moved near her, her silhouette shrinking under his menacing gaze – but his eyes gradually softened, as if welcoming the woman into his private musings and reveries – his opinion, finally undisclosed:

"Alexandra, you're the woman here," with his baritone voice tantalizing the part of her still terrified by his sole presence, Black's elocution was simple yet complex at the same time, as if trying to reveal the obvious. "What I want from you, as a woman, is to make dinner – not a scene," one of his eyebrows, mockingly demoting her to a more basic state, "and to please, be quiet," his experienced hand caressed her right cheekbone, her whole body reacting to his unwanted touch, "you look prettier when you're silent."

Alex rolled her eyes, visibly tired of his dominant, sexist attitude towards her and angrily removed Black's hand from her face – her defiant look penetrating his domains.

"If you don't like it in here you can leave anytime you want," the mercenary suggested as he observed the raging woman, "I'm sure one of your many, many, many friends will be eager to help you."

"You're not helping me," she retorted, her arms now irrevocably crossed against her chest. With one more step, Black finally killed the distance separating their bodies, his threatening eyes fragmenting her convictions one by one.

"Agree to disagree."

He stepped away from her, satisfied with his victory. He took off his hat and his bandana and discarded them carelessly on the wooden table as his fingers traveled across the yellowish pages displayed in front of him – the words "no sightings" were written in the majority of the boxes with only two exceptions reading: "man by the mountainside" and "sighting."

"I still don't know what is it that we're doing here." Alex's voice brought him back but only momentarily.

"You don't need to know – that's not what you're here for," Black answered with his eyes still fixed on Aalem's records. Turning the page, he found a message from the boy:

"She's annoying, indeed."

Black chuckled, a timid smile curling up his lips. He grabbed one of the pencils resting on the table and wrote the words: "She's trying" right under Aalem's handwriting then closed the scratch pad and turned around to face her – for the first time since meeting that woman his expression was genuinely serene. He was older than time, wiser than time – he had been expecting that slap colliding against his face, he deserved it, he knew.

"I see you found his message," Alex said as she grinned back at Black, "he's quite bossy… But I guess he's alright," she added sheepishly as she tucked her auburn hair behind her ears – the man was intimidating indeed, but making the best out of her situation was completely up to her, she knew. She moved nearer, then said: "Aalem said I was supposed to check your wound but it's been so long I don't really see the point."

Black nodded in silence, his laceration was completely healed. He sat on the table, leaving the scratch pad and the pencil aside –

"That kid is like having a pebble in my shoe," he finally said as his eyes reached hers. "But it's a good pebble; he's a good boy." He was being friendlier now – for the first time, he was finally confiding in her. "He means well."

Alex ran her hand through her own hair as she sat down on the table, right next to Black – the redness tainting the palm revealing that her hand was still sore from slapping him. Black smiled at the sight, partially satisfied that his cheek was not the only thing still feeling the repercussions from her outburst.

"Aalem used to work with me back in the palace. I knew his father, he was a good friend, my best friend," Black confessed, as his mind began to drift away. His eyes, unfocused, were slowly starting to abandon the woman sitting there by his side.

Friend -

When was the last time you actually had one of those, Black?

"Then why would you leave the boy all alone out there when you know there's someone lurking in the dark? I thought you would be the one out in the open."

"The man's gone," he began – his façade once again expressionless, untouched by her concern. "And Aalem - he's not a child." With those words he stood up and went to his chamber, his weary bones unable to conceal the tiredness invading his body. Alex sighed, as she realized that that brief instant of comradeship had been left behind. Much to her regret, she had no choice but to admit that that Black wasn't all that bad.

After a few seconds in silence, she heard his footsteps approaching the door of his chamber once again – he stopped, resting one of his hands on the door frame then he looked down and said:

"My bed – it smells like you."

His naked torso was barely visible from where she was standing. Alex smiled timidly at him, her voice lower than before:

"To tell you the truth, I thought you would let me use your bed, thought you'd try to be more like… a gentleman," her confession made her blush slightly as she stood alone in the room; her back leaned against one of the shelves.

"I don't want to set a precedent," he said softly as he retreated to his bedchamber.

A voiceless mother is singing on stage, the saloon explodes as patrons and girls dance and raise their glasses – the night is young and a mercenary stands in the center of the action. Men are fighting around him, possibly because of all the booze running freely through their systems; their fists airborne, their arms swinging before him. A hand grabs him by the shoulder,

"I hope you still remember how to dance," she says – Jessica, the owner of his long-lost virginity is leading him, she grabs his hands and places them around her waist, then moves so slowly, so emotively, it's almost disrespectful not to comply.

But I never was a dancer, ever.

A mercenary is dancing tonight. His movements, so clumsy and torpid, are collapsing shamelessly with her swift parsimony; the woman knows him like the back of her hand – she grins, now notoriously enticed by his awkwardness: they both know how this will end. She smirks, she laughs, she's light – the red ribbon of her passionate loving is inviting him tonight – but there are no more lessons to be learned and so he moves near her, his fingers traveling the softness of her skin – after more than a century, now he's finally in position of teaching her things she has yet to know. They dance, as the rising spirits in the saloon are overwhelming: they surround him, they contain him, they go through him, they call out his name as he glances at his mother once more, still voiceless, still unable to hear that sound he loves so much. A shadow moves around the crowd –

Is it you?

Jessica stops dancing and her eyes turn black – her expression has changed, something is bothering her. The music stops, the girls scream as the patrons stand petrified.

Where's Jessica? Where has she gone?

A weeping lady enters the saloon; she seems hurt, wounded. Her hair is wet but her dress is charred – her skin, scorched and burnt, finds him as she reaches out her hand to touch him. A mercenary chokes on regret tonight, as Annie covers her face with her own damaged hands, those beloved hands.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, static and torn apart by her sole presence. His own mother is eyeing him from the stage – does she even recognize her own child in that man standing in the center of the saloon?

"No, you're not," Annie says, unable to stop the tears streaming down her consumed visage.

I am.

I truly am.

The look on his mother's face is judging him – his own heart is struggling, fighting the moment.

"Go now, find her," Annie yells as the shadow moves around the frozen crowd once more. The mercenary glances at Annie, as her cold and distant eyes pierce through his skin.

"I should have stayed."

A mercenary feels like crying tonight, as his mother's eyes diminish him – even though he's more than one hundred and fifty years old he feels like a child again, like a helpless, vulnerable and anguished child lost in the faceless crowd.

"Let's go, Erron," she says, as she grabs him by his arm with a tenderness that once was his own. Amanda, never Mandy, is also there. She holds Erron's arm but it's not really his arm, it's another Erron's arm. He looks exactly like him, and moves exactly like him, and loves her exactly like he himself does but it's not him; it's another version of him, a happier version of him – a foreign version of himself stealing his own private happy ending.

A soldier?

Suddenly that feeling of betrayal he had felt so long ago seems to vanish: perhaps she didn't fall for someone else after all, maybe she was only his, forever and always, constant and elliptic, like time itself. He frowns, perplexed, as the women of his life surround him – he's hollowed, as he realizes how alone he actually is – his mother's voice is a treasure he has yet to find, Jessica's touch – buried under a black mass of caresses and cravings accumulated in more than a century by his pirate heart, suddenly seems vain, unreachable. Annie still represents the cruel misery conditioning his whole existence and Amanda – he closes his eyes, as an unbearable feeling of loneliness invades him.

He should have stayed – for Amanda, for Annie.

But Amanda, he knows, he's sure: they should have seen the world together.

The crowd disappears and now they are alone – Jessica, Annie, and Amanda surround him; they reach out and touch him - theirs are compelling hands, he knows. Every inch of his skin, summoned by their digits, is longing to belong in their circumstantial kind of faith, they are recruiting in him a true believer; corrupted and intoxicated by their fragmented faith, a faith that would take control of his senses, transforming him into some sort of blind prayer and spreading his shattered pieces all over the place. Each tattooed moan their hands would imprint in his pores would later translate itself into an award ribbon – the collected souvenirs of their existence upon his; the treasured heirlooms he's fairly won and gently gathered all over the years.

Once again he's theirs and they are his, and the sole notion of their resurrected mutual feelings is enough to make him feel that the world is a better place now.

With fistfuls of them and their clothes, he tries to drag them closer to his skin – to his soulless skin. Oh god, he knows - their fingers truly are something to be burnt by.

Among their faces, a shadowed figure watches the scene in silence and finally approaches the gathering – her mischievous smile is inviting, enticing, until the light unveils her features and the image is now clear – reborn from the confines of his darkest desires.

Is it you?

Why?

Why you?

"When was the last time you've been with an Earthrealmer?" she asks and his face is now pale, his mind paused, engrossed by confusion and despair. His three ladies look at the stranger, then back at him – the unisonous sound of their laughter is carelessly caressing his ears.

He closes his eyes, strained and consumed by a profound feeling of unworthiness.

"They are long gone," he hears his own voice saying, but he's not the one speaking – it's that other version of him, his duplicate, the man he had seen holding Amanda's arm. The mercenary looks at him in the eye: he's clearly older than he is, the paradox unfolding – the older man is actually the younger one and the younger one, the more jovial one, is the embodiment of time itself.

You,

You – the one that never even existed: you stole my happy ending.

The image, disturbing and lethal, was enough to wake him from his slumber – his body covered in cold sweat, his hands shaking, his very core completely altered. He stood on his bedroom's doorstep and he gazed at her – her, that corrupting specter awakening his old ghosts. That damn woman now asleep on the cabin's cold floor had unburied all those faces somehow, all those memories he had fought for so long. Her presence, bewildering yet pristine, was an evocation in itself.

He wished he could just deconstruct her; just tear her apart with his bare hands. Turn her into fragments, each little piece of flesh and bone consumed by each one of those haunting memories – then he would bury her, and all of her pieces; her scattered existence forever obliterated from his life, never to resurface again – never to be found again.

He cocked his revolver and aimed for her head – it would be fast; it would be simple. His fingers, though shaking, were about to make a statement.

One

His free hand came to rest on the door frame, his nerves a wholeness now creating a tight fist – he swallowed, his chest exalted by his uneven breathing as she turned and tossed in her sleep.

Two

She, that Shangri-La for his long-lost loved ones was holding the reason why those dreams had suddenly reappeared after entire eras: she wanted a home; the same home he himself had never had; the same home he would never get to share with Amanda, the same home Annie had tried to build around him.

The first house had never even existed.

The second house had its windows bricked up.

The third house had burnt to the ground.

The fourth house was simply impossible. It would never happen.

The woman turned and tossed in her sleep once again, was she dreaming about that home? The home she wanted back in so desperately – she wanted a home; a home that was too late, a home he could not provide.

I hate to leave this story on such a cliffhanger but I'm getting married in 48 hours and then it's honeymoon time – no, seriously, what am I saying? This cliffhanger right before a trip abroad is every writer's dark, contrived, naughty dream…

See you when I get back!