Ch 2 Rating Warning: M for explicit scenes and swearing.

~2~

Now

Elsa's watch alarm pitched its strident wail fifteen minutes to six in the morning; she pressed the tiny button and the wailing ceased. It took a little time to rise from the dark imaginings that had held her captive in the hours of night, and there was a faint taste of seawater on her tongue. She forced complete alertness upon herself; the moment of true beauty came with the dawn and she would not allow a lost day. Not like the bad time.

Anna was dead, her limbs exactly where Elsa had lain them.

The bed and breakfast was quiet. By necessity, Elsa was always up first. The softly swelling dawn barely illuminated their bedroom, the pale walls covered in Anna's handwriting, sentences written in red and blue marker, never black. Elsa stripped off her nightclothes, her left hand aching slightly, reading one of the blue ones:

July 25, 2003 - a young man holding an acoustic guitar and smoking a cigarette. He played Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles for me. Cause of death: drug overdose.

Elsa bought a guitar for Anna for Christmas later that year; Anna had never told her she wanted one, but Elsa had still known. A guitar was something she had always wanted for herself but couldn't have, not with her bad hand, so she gave it to Anna. At least one of them could benefit.

This knowledge was a weapon of the unseen world, and she hated wielding it.

Elsa ignored the red marks on the wall as much as she could; they were thicker globs of writing, sparsely scattered over the walls. At last count there were 92 of them, small bloodened islands of red in vast seas of blue.

When she had finished disrobing, Elsa walked into the adjoining bathroom and turned on the shower, running the water until it was bright and warm. She pulled her platinum blonde hair out of the sleeping braid and ran her fingers through its lustrous locks. Returning to the corpse she had lain against, Elsa peeled the sheets from Anna's youthful body. Anna worked hard to stay slim; she would never sacrifice the taste of good food, so she had jogged relentlessly to keep the pounds from forming. She adopted yoga long before it became hip, and how Elsa had loved to watch Anna's beautiful and youthful body gliding through the poses.

Naked, Elsa lifted Anna the same way Kristoff had last night, under Anna's shoulders and knees. Hefting the body, she shuffled into the bathroom. Getting Anna under the hot stream of the shower was an easier process now than it had been a few years ago; Kristoff had finally renovated away the bathtub and shower combination the inn came with and replaced it with a spacious shower stall. Before then it was a devilish process lifting Anna's dead limbs over the lip of the tub.

Of course, even that was an improvement on the bad time. Thank God for Haley and her sharp memory.

Thank God Haley was coming home. That was at least one thing Elsa could be glad about.

Now it was easier to hold Anna upright as she set Anna's feet to the ground and shimmied them into the shower. Clouds of steam were already advancing through the air, looking for the absent mirror to assault. Sunlight steadily continued to build momentum beyond the fogged window. Elsa positioned herself and her burden in the middle of the shower and waited. Where Anna's limbs pressed Elsa's skin, her breasts, her thighs, her arms, she was cold. Anna was always so cold at dawn.

Anna was dead.

Elsa slowly turned until the spray hit Anna's back and she wrapped her arms about Anna's waist to hold her upright. The body had no intention; Anna sagged in Elsa's arms. She glanced at the waterproof clock on the shower wall; it was exactly six am. In four minutes Anna's brilliant teal eyes would open.

The longest four minutes of Elsa's day.

Delicate droplets of spray condensed on Anna's eyelashes that she couldn't blink away. Under the influence of water, Anna's red hair looked peculiarly dark. Water, heat, and steam enveloped them in a dense blanket. There was only the small and mullioned bathroom window to fog up. No mirror, not now, not ever.

Outside the range of the spray Elsa's back was cold. In their next renovation, whenever they could afford it, Kristoff would install shower heads on the other end of the stall. It would be an improvement, however minor, because such victories had to be celebrated when the fortune teller could not be found.

So Anna was dead, and would stay dead, and there was nothing they could do about it but wait for a red night.

If Elsa could have known about these awful consequences she would never have gone with Anna to the fair. The sound of the calliope had been so brash and invasive, the crowds unfeeling mobs, the stench of grease and cigarette smoke strong. This fate was unimaginable back then, relegated to fairytales or stories of fiction. Now it appeared that there was indeed magic in the world, and that some destinies were writ in stone.

Elsa knew hers, for it had been completely diverted, and all because of the beautiful girl she held in her arms.

The water was still blessedly hot. They never ran out of hot water at the inn. Bless his heart, Kristoff would never grumble about the water bill, not even in winter when tourism was down and guests were few.

As she waited for these four minutes to end, Elsa tried not to think about where Anna was coming from. She wondered if Anna had a blue night, or a red night. She prayed for blue, though there were more clues for tracking the fortune teller in the red. The first moment would show her; would it be a scream or a sigh?

Neither of them could bear the sound of a calliope.

6:04 am.

Elsa lived for these moments of awakening. First Anna's body flushed with pinkness, heat and blood. Her eyes slowly opened, became focused and clear. Her fingers twitched about Elsa's waist. Her head had been lovingly tucked by Elsa's neck; Anna softly kissed the ridged scars on Elsa's throat. Lifting her face, fine mist painting a halo about her head in the morning light, she looked into Elsa's eyes and asked the same question she asked nearly every morning for the past nine years.

Every blue morning. Red mornings were screaming mornings.

"Am I Anna?"

"Yes."

"Are you Elsa?"

"Yes."

"Are we alive?"

"We are now."

No matter how many times Anna had heard these responses, they always seemed to soothe her. Her blue-green eyes were always so heavy with devotion in the morning, grateful and meek, as if she couldn't really understand why Elsa was standing in the shower with her at the breaking of the dawn. As if it were a surprise to see morning sunlight through the veiled bathroom windows, soft and evanescent.

Elsa knew that Anna missed the sight of the moon at midnight, cresting through the clouds like a corsair through ocean fog. The stars no longer chased themselves across the sky for her.

They could no longer make love at night.

Some days, the red days, Anna wouldn't ask why Elsa stayed with her, unless she should hear an answer that would further fracture her severed soul. Elsa would never betray her like that. For her, the answer was simple.

She loved Anna more than anything in the world. The lithe woman in her arms had been her salvation, time and again. Elsa would bear this pain and a thousand others to see Anna smile, to feel Anna's mouth against hers. They were bound to each other now in great forgings of steel.

Daily enduring these nine hours and four minutes was the least Elsa could do for her love, seeing as Anna died every night at nine o'clock, shining briefly like a fallen star. Elsa brought her back to life every morning in the shower, for water was the lubricant of the unseen world, transportation more sure than shadows or mirrors.

Yet however tightly they were bound to each other, Anna was similarly bound to the unseen world. Even if they could find the fortune teller, even if they could somehow command the cessation of this awful curse, would Anna even return to her, or would she stay dead forever?

Finally there was blessed hot water on her own back as Anna turned her around, her fingers warm and soft about her waist. Elsa lifted her hands to hold Anna's face and she planted a warm kiss on her lips. This one kiss led to another, and Anna pulled her even closer, her hands roaming up to plunge into Elsa's long and wet hair.

Elsa tilted Anna's face; she kissed the crest of her jaw, moving steadily upward until her lips met the small scarred nick in Anna's ear, one of her favourite parts of Anna's body. She was always grateful for that scar, for what the scar meant.

Such a tiny thing, surely inconsequential. Just a nick, really.

That little scar represented the two percent shift that forever changed the course of Anna's future. That little scar, leading her to Elsa, and to death every night, and rebirth in the water.

The debt was deep.

Anna's smile was wicked and low. More water, more steam, and Anna pushed Elsa against the back wall. Pinning her hands behind her back, Anna kissed her hard, in near-bruising intensity. The love-hunger of the night before was back in full force and Elsa gasped in wondrous watery breaths. Anna's mouth began to move lower, and her tongue traced the maze of scars that crisscrossed Elsa's throat.

Better. Faster.

Wetter.

Her hands began to trace the outline of Elsa's arms as she worked her way ever lower down her body. Her mouth captured the hard nub of Elsa's breast; Elsa arched her back and neck in response. Anna used the slight opening to thrust her arms behind Elsa's back, pulling her even closer. With the hot water beating on them, Anna continued to kiss Elsa's body, her mouth on her breasts, her stomach. Elsa still had her head back, her eyes closed, her hands resting on Anna's tight shoulders.

Anna came back up slowly, salaciously drawing her wet breasts along the curves of Elsa's body. Elsa opened her eyes. Anna's face was flushed, her eyes velvet and endearing. "I think I adore you," Anna said.

"You think?" Elsa teased. She caught Anna's arms and swung her against the other wall of the shower stall. Pressing her body against the hard and curvy body of her partner, Elsa kissed Anna as she thrust her thigh between Anna's legs. A slow and torturous melding ensued, aided by Elsa's slick fingers, curling up and inside, always up and inside, a rhythm imposed by the tempo of their breathing, and kiss after kiss was placed upon the landscape of their lips.

A low explosion rocked Anna's body; she had to break the kiss and lift her head in order to breathe. Elsa ground against her for a moment longer, drawing out the exquisite sensation. She stopped when Anna embraced her, her arms so strong, so hard, so very loving.

"I love you so much," Anna whispered. "Thank you for not forgetting about me."

A moment of quiet, lit only by the beating heat of the water upon them, and the beating tempo of their hearts. Elsa held her even tighter and spoke into Anna's abraded ear, "I will never forget about you."

Anna believed her, and kissed her one more time, deep, insistent, and grateful. Soap followed in this comfortable quiet, and they shampooed each other's hair, taking every opportunity to caress, to smile, to share. So much time was lost in the shadowy prison of night.

Even though the day had just begun, Elsa knew that night would come too soon. It always did.

Then

Anna's desire for a divorce came from nowhere as far as Hans was concerned. They had been married for three years, and those years weren't all that bad. True, they had to move into the boondocks of Maine, away from her friends in Bangor. True, she could only find work as a gas jockey, but that didn't really matter because he made enough money for the both of them. True, their love life had always been stilted and difficult; she blamed it on what had happened to her as a child.

She did not go to bed with him that night. She sat in the living room with all the lights off, sipping tea and thinking. Around 2 in the morning Hans came out of their bedroom and sat next to her on the couch. "Can we try to fix it first, please?" he asked. "I love you, Anna. Things can be better, I promise. Just tell me what you need."

Anna couldn't articulate it. She knew what she needed, but how could she say it in words?

She needed him to be beautiful.

She needed to be brave.

And she had learned throughout life that she never got what she needed.

His eyes pleading, empty platitudes crossing his lips, she eventually went to bed with him, endured his needy kisses and ached for any sense of a new dawn. When morning came it was as if nothing had happened the night before; could he really sense nothing of the emptiness between them, the vast chasm that had formed not in moments but in three long years?

Everything he did was distant and perfunctory; he took the lunch she packed for him without saying thank you, and kissed her on the cheek before putting on his steel-toed boots. Out the door without any goodbye, any I love you.

Just as well. Anna couldn't say those words, either. Not with the image of that dead dog hovering in her retinas. Not with hatred and desperation curdling her tongue.

He was angry when he got home from work later that day. "Why didn't you tell me what happened at work yesterday, Anna? I had to hear it from Steve. Don't you realize how I looked when they asked me how you were doing?" He flung his lunch cooler on the counter, and the lid clattered noisily to the floor.

"You didn't ask," Anna replied, a lump of dismay in her throat, tears threatening like a thunderstorm behind her eyes.

"I shouldn't have to ask," Hans replied, motioning for her to pick up the plastic lid. "Why can't you just talk to me? None of this would be happening if you could just learn to talk to me! For fuck's sake, Anna, you are my wife!"

Anna's insides twisted and churned, acid racing up her esophagus. He was right. Why couldn't she talk to him the way she needed to? After an uncomfortable and menacing silence, Hans continued in a softer tone, "Were you just scared, Anna? When the guy pulled the gun on you? Is that why you asked for a divorce?"

Mounting a heavy assault against the lump in her throat, Anna managed to say, "What if I just don't love you, Hans?"

"That doesn't fly with me. You must have loved me once. You agreed to marry me, you know, it's not like I dragged you to the altar. Your own dad married us, don't you think he would have known if you were unhappy? We can find it again, you know. Or am I such a bad person that you can't love me at all?"

The thunderstorm of tears finally broke, and she cried a little as she said, "You're not a bad person, Hans. I just want... I don't know what I want!"

Liar.

"Please, we'll get counselling, I'll be a better husband, just don't decide something that affects the both of us, okay? We should work it out. Everyone has their hard times. Your parents did once, and they managed to work it out. Anna, please?"

Thinking of her parents brought no relief. Divorce wasn't really in the vocabulary of a parish priest, especially over such hokum as falling out of love. Hans had the audacity to call her parents that night, and they were less than pleased at the turn of events.

"You owe him, Anna, and you owe God. Marriage vows are not to be taken lightly. You need to try to fix this before you even consider getting a divorce." Her father's voice brought out the chills within her, as it always did. Anna tried to pretend that she didn't care about their words and their stance in the matter, but their betrayal wounded her to the core. She was intuitive enough to realize that this was the same betrayal Hans was feeling at her hands.

For a brief moment Anna wished Hans would hit her again, just to give her a better reason to leave. No one could fault her then.

"If you leave him, who will support you?" her dad asked. In the blank spaces between those words she heard what he was really saying: if she left Hans without at least trying to fix things, if she left so precipitously and without cause, she could expect no support from them, financial or otherwise.

Happiness was overrated. Vows should be impenetrable.

In other words, suck it up, buttercup.

They knew Hans was lazy and unambitious. They knew his college degree mouldered in a drawer while he worked on a construction crew all day. They knew he spent his empty hours on the refurbished computer, content to build characters instead of building relationships. They even knew he monitored every penny she ever spent, even the ones she earned herself. They would not consider any of this as abuse; hadn't she grown up similarly?

The black eyes and various bruises stayed hidden from them, as well as Hans' more disturbing bedroom pleasures.

She was stuck with him, here in a town far away from her friends. Here Anna's needs and dreams mouldered in a drawer as well, her talents obscured by a patina of minimum wage and loneliness. All of this apparently was no good reason to get a divorce. She couldn't tell them or anyone else about the plain-faced gunman and the resulting nick in her ear, or the dead dog, or the truth that clicked in her brain when she saw it.

She couldn't tell her pious father that there was no God, and no hope of happiness in the afterlife. There was only now, and then.

With imploring words, with tear stricken eyes Hans pleaded with her to stay, and to try.

So she stayed. She had chosen this life when she chose Hans, she might as well suck it up. Others had it far worse, and she knew it. A new routine emerged; he occasionally brought home flowers, kissing her on the cheek and not flinching at the latent smell of oil and gasoline. They went to dinner and the movies together, holding hands in the darkness as they had during their short courtship. He showered with her, and roughly made love to her, she endured it.

At the first stirrings of spring Anna fetched a shovel and buried the dog. Dirt finally covered his mocking smile. She would not pray over the grave. There was to be no conversation with the big bully in the sky, if he even existed at all. Her non-relationship with the deity of her childhood was one of the few things she had control over.

At odd moments stark loneliness would strike her, even when she lay cheek to cheek with her husband in the night. All the world softened with the warmth of spring, yet her heart remained frozen.

All too soon they fell back into the habit of eating dinner to the symphony of the television screen, the mindless clattering of forks and knives in perfect stilted harmony. Hans always ate too quickly; she spent hours creating meals that were devoured in minutes without comment. She should have known better than to try and save her marriage with food. After all, this was the man who callously chased prosciutto e melone with cheap beer and had a fit when he realized how much the delicate Italian ham cost.

She found herself on her hands and knees one blazing summer day, illustriously mopping the floor with Pine-Sol and tears. If she looked at the gleaming floor, she would see yet another bruise on her face. Her life was nought but this single unlovely track, stretching before her without end or mercy. She was chained to her marriage by her cowardice, by a sense of inertia and complacency.

There was no heaven, just as there was no love. Not for her.

More nights spent with her legs open and her heart shut, his kisses needy and unbearable. Then he slept, grunting and murmuring in the sheets, his words of endearment falling upon deafened ears. Anna slipped from the bed and stood naked in the darkened living room, the curtains shut against the street lights, and she could only hear his distant snore and the relentless ticking of the clock.

Anna stood there, convinced that if she ran naked through the streets of Ashland she would still be ignored. If she screamed at the top of her lungs no one would hear her. If she should find the right razor or the right gun and quietly disappear from the world she would be as unmissed and unsung as the nameless dog, rotting in an unmarked grave.

One final truth eluded her.

The ripple effect, the influence of humans upon each other. She had a profound influence on so many of the tertiary characters of her life story, but she couldn't see it. She was blinded to it.

Her soul continued to wilt, and she would contemplate death with greater fascination. In her morbid fantasies the soft urge of suicide would caress her, and she would wonder what music they would play at her funeral, what words they would say, what mark she had made on this world so it would even acknowledge that she had come and gone.

She was only twenty three years old.

And then came autumn, the world a bright canvas of reds and oranges and yellows, and woolly thyme creeping over the slightly raised grave of the dead dog. How could there still be beauty?

Another catalyst came on a day like so many others.

Anna was sitting on the stool behind the cash register. The door between the station and the garage was always kept open now. A panic button had been installed under the counter. Dave, his bicep muscles popping as he flexed them, had threatened major hurt on anyone who tried to hurt Anna again. She did not talk overly much about her deteriorating marriage with any of them; Dave, Gary, or Rajinder. One didn't speak of such things when banging beneath the hood of a car, as they all taught her the mechanic trade and praised her for her adept hands and clever mind.

Sergeant Carter came through the doors that day, her hair out of her standard ponytail and blazing like the sun in its heaven. Recently off-duty, still in her uniform, the woman flitted into the station as if a breath of fresh ocean air. Seeing her brought that horrible day back to Anna's mind.

"You all right, Mrs. Markham?" the sergeant asked as she set down her purchases of potato chips and soda. Her voice was devastating in its solicitude.

Anna couldn't answer over the thickness in her throat. Her hands were grimy and oil spotted; Dave had been teaching her a few tricks with engines and alternators. Her hair would never be more than this dull crimson, her eyes no more than washed out ocean. What a pathetic thing she was next to this radiant and glowing woman, where the universe would be overjoyed to sparkle in her eyes, where men would cast jackets over puddles for her angelic feet, where two minutes spent in her presence would be an addictive drug, always wanting more.

Did Anna need Hans to be beautiful?

Or did Anna need to be beautiful herself?

"I'm fine," she eventually managed to say, after ringing through nearly all of the purchases. There was a flash again of pity and warmth in the officer's eyes, and the glance was no healing salve; it was a knife scoring through all her carefully laid defences, laying bare the great wound over her soul.

"I hope so," Sergeant Carter replied. She touched Anna on the hand before she left.

Anna watched her until she disappeared, and then for some time Anna looked at that spot on her dirtied hands where the Sergeant had touched her. A tide within her soul was rising. All she needed was one more catalyst.

It ended up being as surprising as the gunman and the dead dog.

I hope you enjoyed these first two chapters. From now on I'll post one a week. I welcome all your comments and reviews!