~9~
Now (2009)
Daybreak cracking over the lip of the world in a bloody birthing, streaks of red painted across the sky as if God were a frustrated and bitter artist.
Shivering, Elsa stood naked in the shower, holding the cold and limp body to her, letting the hot stream pulse on Anna's back. Deflected droplets near stung her cheek. Steam filled the room; there was no mirror, only the muted windows crying in empathy for the burdened sunrise. The pebbled mat on the floor of the shower stall was still cold as well, and rough against her feet.
Elsa was so tired. Her very bones trembled as if liquid and meek.
Weary, she looked up at the clock. It was almost time. She ached for sleep.
Elsa never really got what she wanted, at least not the way she wanted it.
Three.
Two.
One.
Anna inhaled, sharp and steep.
That was all the space given for Elsa to prepare; she ground her feet into the mat and braced herself.
Anna screamed.
She screamed, and it was no thin required shriek of the roller coaster, nor the high, piercing surprise of a particularly gory scene of a horror movie. This scream was thick, running on a tide of red, advancing on waves of blood, a scream that reverberated in her vocal cords, climbing to obscene horror and the most profound terror imaginable. Feral, anguished, a scream to curdle nightmares and castrate dreams.
Slipping on the mat, Anna dug her nails into Elsa's skin as she screamed herself awake, leaving long raised welts that stung under the water.
Another quick inhale, her eyes wild and despairing, not seeing Elsa, only seeing the shocking horror of a red night. And another anguished scream, raising the fine hairs of Elsa's neck, her skin pebbling in sympathetic terror, Anna's voice cracking and breaking as she screamed and screamed.
Elsa tried to shake her, to bring her out of whatever hell the fortune teller had placed her in, but Anna lost her grip, her nails still furrowing down Elsa's skin, until she crumpled in a heap on the floor of the shower stall. There she lifted her hands to her face, clapping them over her eyes, taking another breath for yet another scream.
Water assaulted them, bright, hot, mocking.
Elsa turned off the water, and rapidly opened the stall to reach for her bathrobe. Dripping wet, she wrapped it quickly around herself, Anna's continued screaming nearly shaking the very mortar between the bricks of the house, shivering the weather putty in the frame of the window.
Renee, dressed in her pyjamas, was opening the bathroom door just as Anna dug her nails into the skin of her thighs; she pressed down hard and pulled as she shrieked, raising small droplets of blood that disintegrated on the remnants of the water on her skin.
Elsa crouched next to Anna, trying to pull at her shoulders and lift her from the ground of the stall. For a moment it seemed as if her lover would come to her, but then some new horror emerged on her face, as if she could still see whatever had happened during the red night.
"Damn you, God!" Anna screamed, digging in her nails once more and sobbing.
Elsa grasped Anna's hands to prevent more injury, and Renee came to crouch near the shower stall. Later Anna would likely be embarrassed at her nakedness, but it seemed all she cared about now was the horror of the red night imprinted on her. Elsa's heart seemed to plug up her throat at the wretched half-cry half-scream of her beloved partner; later she would rain a thousand curses upon the fortune teller.
For now she simply grasped Anna's hands, and with Renee's assistance, Anna was pulled from the shower and stopped screaming. A few moments were shocking in their silence, and it seemed as if Anna was regaining her senses.
But then her eyes widened once more, seeing only what she was forced to see, and another high and maddened scream erupted from her lips as she tried to wrench her hands away from Elsa. Elsa was barely aware of the tears streaming down her own face as she called Anna's name.
"GOD!" Anna screamed, and then vomited seawater on the floor. Elsa pulled as much of Anna's body into her lap as she could, shying away from the thin mess, stroking damp hair and damp skin. Renee tossed her a towel; she covered Anna's bare skin as Renee went to the cupboard. Hidden under a drawer was a key; she used it to open a locked drawer that had a small array of vials and pills along with several prepped syringes.
The screaming had stopped again for a moment, but Anna's whole body still convulsed and shook as she sobbed. Elsa was barely aware of the sobbing noise she herself was making; she looked up at her brother's wife with agony in her eyes. Renee looked back at her, holding the syringe. She had been a nurse when she met Kristoff. Her skills often came in handy.
"Wait," Elsa implored.
Renee nodded, her mouth in a thin line. She threw a couple of towels over the pale pool of thin vomit on the floor and waited.
Sometimes Anna was able to calm herself.
This was not one of those times.
After several minutes passed in her wild, hysterical sobbing, her fists clenching and scratching, raising even more welts on Elsa's skin, Elsa finally nodded.
Renee tapped the syringe a couple times to be sure all the bubbles were out, and then she pressed the needle into the spare flesh of Anna's buttock. She depressed the plunger slowly, expertly, watching Anna's reaction as the sedative cascaded through her system.
The sedative worked quickly; soon Anna was only a tiny bundle of skin and nerves, taking an occasional hiccupping breath, her eyes lidded, her pupils dilated. No more screams, no more sobs, just anguish and torment written on a deeply beloved face.
The last red night had been more than six months ago, and Anna hadn't needed the tranquilizer. "This was a bad one," Renee said, unknowingly echoing Elsa's thought. The brown-skinned woman tucked a strand of Anna's hair behind her ear and then looked right into Elsa's eyes. "Make sure you allow yourself time to scream too, Elsa," Renee advised. "Don't always bottle it up."
"Thanks, Renee," Elsa said softly, quitting her tears. Her whole body ached, and her legs were falling asleep under Anna's weight. "Can you get her robe?"
Renee grabbed the thin robe from behind the door; they struggled to get Anna's drugged limbs in their proper places. Once Anna was decent, Renee lifted her voice just slightly and called for Kristoff.
Everyone would have been woken by Anna's unearthly screams; he and Haley were waiting on the other side of the door to assist. They were lucky that there were no guests at the inn; Anna's banshee red night screams could near raise all the dead, revenant and mortal alike. At Renee's invitation, Kristoff came in, his hair an unruly mop, suddenly looking so much like their father that Elsa, under other circumstances, would have cried.
There were no tears left right now. She had cried her quota.
Haley was on his heels, her bubble gum coloured hair a similar mess; she held her small digital audio recorder in her hands.
Elsa knew she couldn't lift Anna up, not with her prickling legs, not with her hands shaking with the rush of adrenaline, her left hand in particular throbbing and complaining. Kristoff picked Anna up with a slight grunt and carried her into the bedroom. Her teal eyes were still open, still distant, a narcotic window between her and her red night, a window that would eventually have to shatter.
Haley helped Elsa to her feet, and then pressed the recorder into her hand. It was the recorder that Haley always used for her research, her interviews, her encounters. Somewhere on her computer server would be a recording of the haunted experience on the Prestwood Bridge, as well as the recordings of all the red nights.
So as cruel as it was to suggest it, Haley said, "I hope she remembers everything."
Elsa could only nod, her muscles still trembling with exertion and fright. Red nights, so horrifying, so rare, also held the most clues. It was only through red nights over nine long years that Anna discovered the cunning depth of their adversary, the fortune teller, and only through red nights did Anna learn of the artefact they were hunting with such fervour.
The mirror that held Anna's soul captive.
Where the fortune teller was, if she still had the mirror; these were things they did not know. Until they did, nothing could ever change.
Anna yearned for the day she would find a grey hair on her head, and she waited in anticipation for varicose veins and wrinkles about her eyes.
Apparently Elsa collected all the age for both of them.
Renee retreated into the bathroom to clean up the mess and tidy the room. Kristoff and Haley retreated, murmuring in low voices to each other. Until Anna could reveal the details of the red night, all they could do was wait. Before Renee left, she said, "Anna's not entirely knocked out. She'll start coming around in about half an hour. You can start questioning her then."
"Thank you," Elsa said quietly, standing by the bed, looking at the crumpled form of her lover on the sheets. Anna's eyelashes were damp with tears, her face pale yet her cheeks flushed. Renee left, closing the door behind her.
Sunrise had been bloody. It seemed the old sailing adage proved true.
Red sky at morning, sailor's warning.
There were a few latent tremors throughout Anna's body. Elsa brought a comb from her vanity and began to comb Anna's damp hair. Anna loved having her hair brushed, her scalp massaged; it was her favourite comforting ritual.
When she had finished, Elsa stripped away the bathrobe and tucked her between the sheets. Putting the comb away, Elsa disrobed and slid in beside her. They were both still somewhat damp from the shower. Elsa spooned up tight behind her partner, sliding her leg between Anna's leg and wrapping her arm around her abdomen, feeling the slight shuddering of her breath, the occasional muscle spasm.
Her fear and aching sadness got diluted as frustration and anger built inside her, simmering and aware. She hadn't chosen any of this. This was all just another manifestation of the damnation of her life, these insurmountable obstacles that kept her from progressing further in every aspect except age.
Was there any good left in the world at all?
Or was this planet not really a blue planet, but a red one? How much blood did the ground devour each and every day throughout the world, as people mugged and raped and murdered each other?
No wonder God was a frustrated artist. Look at what He had to work with.
She knew Anna was returning to her when Anna began to softly cry; low, piteous. Elsa kissed the soft skin of Anna's neck, nuzzling into her, watching the shadows change across the piebald walls, knowing that soon there would be an ugly splash of red marker on them, detailing the horrors of this night. Elsa shifted position slightly, just enough to turn on the recorder, before resuming her full body contact.
Anna knew what had to happen. It would never be enough to experience the horror of a red night just once, cast inside the nightmare of a person shattered and broken and dead by violence; no, she would live it once more in the telling of it.
Elsa had discovered long ago just how brave Anna was.
Elsa felt doomed to be timid, and hated herself for it.
Then (1999)
Halloween was coming with all the pomp and ceremony of New England. Haley was a holiday junkie; she celebrated Christmas with the same fervour as St. Patrick's Day. Yet Halloween would always be her favourite; she was born on the 31st of October.
Salem was a comfortable two hours away, and the entire mid-Atlantic coast had erupted in pagan frivolities; carnivals, haunted houses, traveling soothsayers and sword swallowers. Fortune tellers with their crystal balls and their tarot cards; Haley found it all incredibly fascinating and dragged Anna from booth to booth at the Salem Fair as if they were impetuous teenagers. They ate cotton candy and elephant ears and hot dogs, and the entire experience was narrated by a Haley who knew an astonishing amount about the paranormal.
Haley believed in ghosts and angels, in divine interpretations of sodden tea leaves and cards. She had gotten a tarot reading with a fortune teller at the Shadow Walk and was ecstatic about it.
And Anna didn't really believe in anything.
The Patten Free Library in Bath had been outfitted in careful and cheap celebration, with costume parties and candies and readings of books like Where the Wild Things Are. Casey should have been among them; a fairy, or a ghost, or Princess Leia. She should have been tooling about the town with the excitement of all four year olds, still scared of flashing lights and maniacal pumpkins and realistic masks. Her teeth should have been threatened by all the cavities brought home in her basket of trick and treats.
The day of Halloween, Anna and Haley had driven up to Bangor in Haley's beater to visit the four year old. The walls of the children's hospital were just as beribboned as any library or school with crayon drawings, and any plastic mask worn by the ailing children would be welcomed, just so everyone would not have to look at their eager and pathetic faces, their skin the colour of raw oatmeal and their scalps shining in the harsh lights.
Gerda had barely been able to say a word to them. Her husband, Kai, was snoring in a chair nearby, exhausted from working two jobs to pay the hospital bills. Casey opened her eyes long enough to see the gifts of candy they had brought. Gerda even let Haley put a rub-on butterfly tattoo on the back of Casey's hand.
The trip home had been ominous and bereft of conversation, and music thundered inside the car. Anna trembled with rage, unable to send that anger anywhere because the person she wanted to address it to simply didn't exist. God was just a human invention, just like Santa Claus to receive prayers like wish lists. The world had proved it, with the gunman, the dog, and the IV sprouting from Casey's hand.
She spent the evening with Haley, and cooked her a birthday dinner.
November came secretly, as if to tiptoe into the next season and catch winter unawares. The streets of Bath became slippery with freezing rain, and the Kennebec River continued to flow, ignoring the ice that tried to advance over it. Hunters came to town in small mobs.
Anna found figs at the grocery store one day. Elated, she grinned at the produce manager; a middle-aged man who could have waltzed from the pages of a Roald Dahl book, what with his lanky profile and Cheshire grin. "I've never seen anyone so happy to see a fig before," he chuckled. "Now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?"
Anna asked for persimmons, or maybe fresh lychee. He laughed even harder, and promised to see what he could do.
Havarti cheese jumped into her basket, and later that evening she ate those figs with the cheese, a balsamic vinegar reduction dripped lightly on them. She sat in her kitchen and ate them slowly; a sumptuous dessert. An imaginary Elsa ate them with her, and touched her on the hand as she smiled.
Tuesdays and Thursdays were the best days, but also the worst days. There was no way of halting the freight train of her desires, to quit her futile imaginings. Those unsaid conversations tormented her, because she had no way of knowing whether Elsa looked on her as just a friend who happened to occasionally bring her lunch, or if she was turning into something more.
Every Tuesday and Thursday (Elsa days!), the blonde woman would hang up her coat, place her pencils and notebook carefully in her carrel, and begin her steady ramble through the stacks, her wanderings aimless and random to everyone, including Anna. Anna burned with curiosity regarding Elsa Kelly, wondering what Elsa wrote about, where she actually lived, and why she came to the library only those two days a week.
Chicken cordon bleu with steamed rice and asparagus.
Thin crust pizza, with spinach and feta cheese.
Burritos and corn chips with homemade guacamole.
Borscht with sour cream and fresh bread.
Eyes followed them and narrowed at those innocent touches on hand and wrist; shook their heads at the demure flirting. Were the library matrons suspicious of Anna's intentions? Was all of this mere friendship, or was it something more?
It was a question that plagued Anna as well, especially in the long and lonely watches of the night. When the heat register whispered, it was in Elsa's voice. When the walls soaked in the smell of Anna's cooking, it was the appreciative sniff of the castle book girl. During the night, Anna tossed in her narrow bed and ached with loneliness. She even bought an extra pillow, just for hugging.
Just for pretending.
She was never lonely enough to miss Hans' touch, nor the warmth of his body next to hers. No, cracked and shivering in the November dawn, it was another's arms she dreamed of.
The articulation of whose arms they were was something only to be thought of at night, and carefully as well, lest she blush even more terrifyingly during the day like some buffoon at the remembrance of her fantasies.
She actually dreamed of Elsa one night. Waking from it was exquisite torture. Moistness pooled at the core of her, for the dream had been of hammocks and sun-loved hair and lips that alternated between firmness and wanton shyness. Complete and absolute devotion emanated from the dream-Elsa like a tethered blue dwarf star. Anna alternated between toying with the dream and shutting it away. To lose herself in the fake honeyed depths would kill her, but so would loneliness.
Fortune favours the brave.
She managed to keep her composure the next time she saw Elsa. There was no schedule of lunch deliveries for the blonde woman; surprising Elsa with irregular food deliveries had become a precious pastime. They still didn't speak overly much, and the mystery of the woman deepened with the march of time. November eased into December and Elsa was never seen about the city sidewalks, nor shopping in the grocery store. She only appeared in the library, only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and kept to herself.
The city of Bath continued to be magical and alluring. There were many hidden haunts, secretive eyots to delight the eyes and soothe the senses. By some miracle, Casey recovered enough of her strength to be allowed to come home. Despite the favourable release, Gerda remained silent and withdrawn, tucked into a protective shield to keep out the world. It was her quiet that most unnerved people. Grand displays of histrionics and victimization would go over far better than the wounded strength of this remarkable woman.
Christmas loomed, and Anna didn't know whether she would go home or not. She had no burning desire to spend the holiday with her parents, even though they had been making a more concentrated effort lately to communicate with her. Maybe she wasn't the spawn of the devil after all, if she was now gainfully employed and obviously happy, blessed with work and a place to live. They sometimes asked if she had heard from Hans, but the answer was always no.
The last Wednesday before Christmas had arrived, and she still had not decided what to do about the holiday. The library had a small staff party, and Haley dyed her hair red and green in celebration and wore five Christmas tree earrings up one of her ears. Haley and Anna were the only ones who had not brought extended family with them to the staff party; Gerda and Kai were there, along with Casey. The toddler had a bright Grinch bandana over her head, and she emanated some strange sort of vitality as she jabbered in the unconquerable language of children. Both Gerda and Kai looked exhausted and left before 9 pm, without having drunk any of the spiked eggnog Anna had prepared.
At Anna's invitation, Haley came home with her for a sleepover. Both of them feeling slightly giddy with the effects of the eggnog, they sat beneath blankets in their pyjamas and jabbered on about a million tiny and insignificant things.
"Tomorrow is Thursday," Haley suddenly said.
"You're a regular Einstein," Anna laughed. "I'm glad you can read a calendar."
Haley stuck her tongue out at her and continued, "I mean, it's Thursday. An Elsa day."
There was a hard knock against Anna's chest, and her cheeks flamed bright before dying down again. "See, you can't hide a thing from me," Haley crowed. "C'mon, what were you thinking?"
She was thinking of her father's sermon, and the hurt expression on Hans' face when she asked for a divorce. She remembered the soft touch of Sergeant Carter on her hand, and the throbbing nick in her ear.
She remembered standing near naked in her living room with nought but shame and cowardice in her heart, Hans' snoring cacophonous in her ears.
She ached for a kiss.
Haley was softly inquisitive, and though Anna's apartment was cold there was summertime in her heart. "I've got a crush on her," Anna said softly.
Though crush was a woefully inadequate word to express what she really felt.
Haley didn't speak; she just looked at Anna with that soft and fierce intensity. In the silence, Anna felt compelled to continue. "I'm not sure if I was really looking for it, or if it just happened. I mean, I don't even know that much about her, I don't know where she lives, what her favourite colour is. She never talks about herself. It's just... looking at her, it changes me. I think about her constantly during the day, I dream about her at night, and I'm still a coward because I can't ever say what I want to. So I got up the courage to bring her lunch, and I know that she likes them, but I can't seem to move on."
"What are you afraid of?" Haley asked.
"What anyone in love ever is," Anna replied, her voice heated and breaking. "Of rejection. Of putting my heart on the line and having her stomp all over it. But yet I'm afraid of dying before ever feeling what must exist somewhere, because everyone writes about it and all the movies show it, and surely there must be romantic love that lasts, that connects. It can't all be a farce, can it? Or does everyone just lie?"
Haley looked up into the darkened ceiling, the edge of her face lit only by the nightlight in the kitchen. She looked far older and wiser than her newly twenty years.
"You certainly aren't the first person looking for it, Anna," Haley said to the ceiling. "And despite what you may have been taught, you aren't evil for looking in Elsa's direction. I wonder if still there is a small part of you that thinks you are a bad person for having these feelings for women, and for Elsa in particular. As if God is judging you."
"I don't believe in God," Anna defended, somewhat defeated and low.
"You don't, or you can't?" Haley asked, finally looking at Anna again in the darkened apartment. "Isn't it easier not believing, so you don't have to worry about being judged? You reject God first because you think he is going to reject you for feeling the way you do."
The words were thunderous in her head, even though they were spoken softly.
"He is, though, isn't he?" Anna said, that heated rage boiling over. "How many times are we told that homosexuality is a sin? That God, this kind and gentle God, will thrust us sinners down to hell with the really evil ones, the child abusers and the murderers and the like? You may be right, Haley. I can't believe in him. Not now. Not ever."
"Then trust your own feelings," Haley advised. "Because it's becoming more and more obvious to the rest of us that you have a connection going on."
"What do you mean?" Anna asked quickly. "Who the rest of you and what...?"
"Calm down, Anna. You could use some lessons in observation, you know. I can't say for certain what she feels for you, but she sure does stare at you a lot when you're not looking."
More summertime in Anna's oblivious heart.
And nothing but aching loneliness in Haley's.
...
As you can see, I'm rebooting this story again. If you liked it, please drop me a note in that review box!