A/N: The creepy fifth grader I tutor got suspended for getting in a fist fight with a boy who called her a slut. It's adorable really – a petite, innocent looking blonde girl beating the crap out of a guy a foot taller than her. I heart America's youth.
Just a note, there is an actual conversation with God in this chapter. Tell me if you find it offensive. I didn't try to be.
X O X O X
When Chase was eighteen he ran away.
It was after the funeral, the worst day of his life in that stupid suit that didn't fit right when false sympathy hung in the air like stars on strings in the cardboard universe that grew smaller by the day. Years of alienating the people around him, pushing away those who dared to care had finally left him alone.
It wasn't really running away. Running away inferred you had someone to run from.
And Robert Chase had no one to run from but himself.
He had just wanted it all to go away, to get away.
Away from that house.
Away from the church on the edge of the valley.
Away from the lies laced with shadows, unacknowledged doubts fringed with self pity, all edges blurred by the whiskey labeled as communion wine.
It was the second time in his life he had ever been drunk, the second to last time he ever would, and somehow in that moment it felt okay to be a complete failure. It made him feel human, alive.
At least he was breathing.
Chase was always a bit of an addict, the kind that kept memories for ammo and waited for forty-five minutes when the operator asked him to hold; the kind that stood in elevators for an extra moment just to hear the mundane music; the kind that could stand in a crowd and never feel more alone; a social-acceptance junkie to the last.
Chase followed the sound of broken sobs, harsh and gasping in the thin air, hollowed thoroughly by intoxication, wading his way through the dwindling starlets and sons of great men without a legacy of their own.
"-shocking behavior."
"-a common drunk-"
"No decency-"
"Vices don't disappear. Thank God your should doesn't either."
Ya. Sure. Addictions transpiring into the afterlife, waking from a nightmare to walk into another; it was a lot to be thankful for.
He surfaced from the mass of choked chiffon and chivalry expecting the worst.
What he found was nothing.
Almost.
In the center of the gathering was an old-style phonograph, a warped black record revolving in tight, even spirals beneath an arm lacking a stylus.
Chase glanced around him again. No one really seemed bothered by the fact that there was no actual topic of gossip. No one noticed.
What are these people on?
He pushed forward, annoyed, and lifted the arm of the record player. The sobbing immediately stopped.
The sheep didn't.
"-outrageous."
"-just came out of nowhere-"
Chase shook his head heavily, disbelief working its way through his body. "Just so you know, you're all insane."
"-just crazy."
"-out of his mind-"
"Poor boy's lost his wits!"
They weren't even looking at him, past him, to something, someplace he was blind to; unwilling to seek.
You're all insane.
But then again, what made him so different from them?
The hallway before him was winding, full of people and delusions of sanity. Satin-skinned men as dark as the night stood in white Klan robes listening to the silent speech of a naked mannequin, unmoving and unmoved, a faint hum of Strange Fruit a few octaves too low working its way through the surrounding congregate. Bloodied and bruised queens of an era not ready for acceptance sat under the care of faceless doctors with smoke-filled syringes, trying facilely to tune out the dozen or so children of a Nazi Youth group, unaware smiles poised beneath payess and worn yamikas.
Screwed up didn't even begin to describe.
Why was this all so familiar?
Did history really repeat? Were we, as a society still so all-knowing that we refuse to learn, so naïve as to hope for a better tomorrow without change? How dare we dream of another day while horror envelops the one we're living in now?
How could God let this happen, let him doubt? It had been so long since he had been raw enough to stand waiting for some transparent messiah to come and solve all his problems, but Jesus, did life really have go like this?
He had come so close to faith while never feeling a thing.
He pushed away human contact, distanced himself from everyone he knew and all he had yet to meet, cornered himself, desperate for a sign. None came. He stayed and prayed and waited, going through the motions of living until the hate living flourished like a desert rose in the cold, dark place within him. He hated the priests, the nuns, the parishioners, anyone whose eyes followed him with only lust or judgment. He hated his mother for being weak, his father for being weaker, himself for crying, God for abandoning. He hated everyone on this lousy planet whose lives went on while he crashed and burned.
He was so damn sick of sitting in his own wreckage, a silent monument to those who didn't matter.
He was utterly nonessential, useless beyond the point of pain.
It was all he'd ever been, all he's ever be.
He would die, if not now then later; be mentioned by some from time to time, memorialized by none until eventually, the name Robert Chase fell from their lips completely.
There was no way to change fate, alter the inevitable.
He'd lost track of how many times he'd had to learn that lesson.
Chase paused to watch a faction of limbless Cold War vets reminisce about a better time, a better life, a pretty girl.
"They're not as nice as they seem," a slow, even voice muttered from behind him. "They've got no manners."
Chase didn't have to turn to see who was speaking.
"Neither have I," he reasoned softly, focusing in on one quadruple amputee unable to brush the fly from his forehead.
"My fault probably."
Probably.
There was no question in Rowan Chase's voice, just a sort of mindless reputation that came along with claiming fault without feeling.
Chase turned around and looked his father over.
He was younger here, smoky hair slicked back, charcoal eyes seeing any and everything. He really did look like Robert; his stance and built a mirrored in his son, still the unsure child he had left so many years ago, just another mistake out of the millions he'd made.
"Ya," Chase whispered, voice accusing and distant, "Probably."
"What are you doing here so soon?" Rowan asked, a faint coldness etching through his cordial tone. Patience was not his strong-point.
Chase forced a challenging smile, a perfect mixture of smug self-assurance and pointed dare.
"Oh believe me," he started lightly, his tone spiking behind gritted teeth, "It wasn't my first choice in ways to start a day, but hey, could be worse." For what seemed like the first time Rowan Chase had nothing to say.
Chase could feel his blood getting hot under his skin. For a moment he considers returning the silence, but instead said, "You know who it must really suck for? The ones who didn't get smashed up in a car crash. It must be so unexpected to lose someone just like that with no warning." He paused. "Not that you would know."
Rowan's gaze turned sharp as a razor.
"You're being disrespectful."
No shit.
In the distant back the Klan members had changed their tune to some old Dylan song. Chase stood for a moment, trying to remember which.
"No," he said finally, "all I'm doing is saying what we're both thinking."
Rowan shifted uncomfortably. He preferred his vices anywhere but the spotlight.
"I'm sorry," he muttered insincerely, "I should have told you about the cancer, but it really didn't seem fair. I hadn't been there so much, well, you know."
Only a Pawn in Their Game.
That's it, the name of the stupid song.
Only a pawn.
Was he?
"No," he said, defiance etching his voice, "I don't."
"Robert-"
"Dad, do me a favor," he cut in sharply, "stop talking."
His ears were buzzing and it was getting sort of hard to breathe. He didn't want to talk to this guy.
He wasn't aware of himself walking away, just Rowan calling after him without following. Funny how his father wasn't any different here than he was at any other time Chase had ever known him.
He was the most familiar stranger he'd ever known.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Chase glanced up at the arching ceiling above him, wrought-gold laced like ivy over the glass, faint bars of light seeping through like rain on a child's palm.
It was funny really, the beauty that clung to fault.
A half-dozen or so gypsies of a century that had passes so many times before sat assembled, selling beads on twine and fortunes of the past from caravans of colored paper. Beside them was a pair of murky glass doors with scratched letting scrawled across in a rather eloquent script.
Chapel.
What kind of people prayed on the other side? What was the point?
Chase peered through cloudy glass. The scene was light, faintly mottled. A soft murmur of prayers in tongues he did not know worked their way through the air, enticing hope for what seemed like the very first time. He pressed a palm to the smudged, letting the pulse of another life seep through his skin.
Another life.
Never was a string of syllables so filled with want.
Chase pushed the door open, stepping through to the threshold to the soft welcome within.
He let his soft bare-feet guide him to a back pew, leaving foggy footprints of warmth behind with each step.
The cool wood was comfortable and worn, a forgotten fingerprint left behind by so many before him. He hadn't been in a church in a while. This was nice; almost homely.
Almost home.
"I know it's not much," a somehow familiar voice cooed in his ear, "but we do what we can."
Chase turned in surprise. It was the first breath he'd felt on his skin in God knows how long.
"What?" the woman asked lightly, "don't recognize me?"
He sat for a moment later until recognition surpassed his guard.
"Kayla," he whispered, shamed slightly by the moment of hesitation. She was the only patient he'd ever been careless enough to kill.
"No," she crowed lightly, "just her appearance."
"Then who-"
"Come on, Robert, do you need me to spell it out for you? It's only three letter. I'm sure you could manage just fine on your own."
His voice sounded squeaky in his throat. "God?"
"That's the one."
Kayla's body slid around the edge of the pew, taking a nonchalant seat next to him, coy smile fitting her tired face like a child's hand around its mother's fingers.
"Anything you want to ask me?"
Chase started to shake his head, but stopped himself.
"Shouldn't you already know the answer to that?"
"I'm not physic," she said softly, smiling lips twitching further up, "just the Almighty. I'm all-seeing, not all-knowing, ya know? It's a sweet deal being the creator. I get to make stuff, drop it and watch where it falls."
Screw self-containment. Chase was shaking his head again.
"That's it? You make stuff? What about pain and death and disease and-"
"-addiction?" One eyebrow arched acridly. "Aren't we the pessimistic one? No questions about life or love?" Chase stared flatly, not daring to open his mouth. God sighed, shifted and repositioned herself to answer again. "I made the tree of knowledge. I made the temptation. Some fall to that. Some don't. I can't explain why people hurt. Hell, I can barely explain why the sky's blue." A pause. "I can't answer most of your questions. I've provided the means. Most people don't like what they find. Asking me in person doesn't change the truth."
Chase nodded, pressing his spine flat against the back of the pew in an attempt to straighten out a bit. He was so damn tired.
"Is there anything you'd like to hear from me directly?"
Chase felt his lips curling despite himself. "I'm pretty good actually."
"Well," God sighed, standing, "come back any time if you want to talk."
She was half out the door before Chase thought to ask, "Why Kayla?"
A soft hand stopped the exit's swing. "Pardon?" God asked faintly.
Chase paused for a moment, feeling strange about having to explain something to God. "You picked Kayla's form to see me. Why?"
That gorgeous full-out beam no one had seen since Kayla's death was suddenly all over her face. "Because it wasn't your fault."
She paused again, looking him over. "If you want to go back," she added lightly, "go."
"How?"
There was that smile again. "There's a sign, sweetie. You need it explained further?"
"A...what sign?"
But Kayla's thin body had already dissappeared around the corner, a faint air of question left hanging in its place.
What sign?
X O X O X
Explanations of stuff for people who have a life:
The stylus is the needle on the arm of a record player. (No needle, no sound.)
The Klan is a reference to the Klu Klux Klan, a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic organization cough cult cough cough that pretty much ran around the South for decades reeking havoc, destroying homes, lives and killing countless people for no good reason other than ignorant, brainwashed hate.
'Strange Fruit' was a Billie Holiday song about seeing a black man lynched.
Payess are those two curly locks of hair that (male) Orthodox Jews wear. Yamikas are the head-coverings used in prayer.
'Only a Pawn in Their Game' is a song by Bob Dylan off his 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin'.
jazz hands for useless information
Next chapter is very possibly the last, discluding the maybe-epilogue, which probably isn't even worth mentioning. Wow. It's almost over and I'm not in nursing home. Who knew?
Remember kids, a comment a day keeps the psychotherapists away. Waste two minutes and help me keep sane. Comment please.
