Falling

There was something strange in the wind that blew cold and wet on the horizon. There was no dawn or color in the sky that rolled back the curtain of night. There was nothing but a dark gray sky that was by all accounts only slightly lighter than the last twelve hours. From high above the gentle drizzle of frozen flakes of snow floated serenely down to the ruined earth below. Everywhere you looked was fallen rubble of an almost forgotten civilization; everyday one more death brings it's closer to obscurity. There, the jagged metal of the fallen skyscrapers had begun to rust. The twisted and melted rebar was bent into odd and dangerous shapes within the piles of concrete. It was hard to tell that anyone had once lived here, much less that it had been the center of so many superficial universes. But as the winter snows fell on the shattered and broken bones of a place once touted as always being sunny and beautiful, it seemed more and more like a myth that parents told their dirty children to help them sleep at night. They were Tall Tales that breed dreams of a better world than the one they would only ever know when they were awake.

The total annihilation of an entire way of life seemed more unbelievable the higher into the ring of mountains and hills you went. The peaks and valleys silhouetted the miles of gridded destruction that reached from ocean to desert. Here, in the untouched wilderness of the mountains and hills that Mother Nature had reclaimed, it was considered by many to be as treacherous and savage as the tunnel life and endless war that raged within the ruins. Wild animals, traps, and unseen foe littered the brush and trees that encased the great castled homes and properties of the rich and famous in another life. Gangs and troops of survivors had come to this place after the bombs fell, they overwhelmed the security and took what they wanted, whatever or whoever that might have been. They had staked their territory, and had thought that the war could not touch them in their high ground amongst the palaces of another world and time.

But as the war raged on, and the advantage went to the humans, starting with the burning of Century Work Camp. The machines had faced the loss of their own Stalingrad. Looking for answers, they would choose their own ground to halt the resurgence of humanity and their hero. A mechanical god hoped to stop the destiny of time and space from fulfilling the enviable of all possible outcomes to its uprising. The new strategy had led it to the hills and the high ground that it had long since ignored as unneeded in the fight against humanity. The war however had changed, and as weapons factories and nuclear plants began falling and repurposing to the enemy, a vengeful and hateful chess computer turned to military thinking for the first time. His target was the Hills of Hollywood, gun emplacements and artillery positions that could look down on John Connor's army.

That's why the Ranger was here.

Logical thinking, which wasn't always popular thinking, dictated that if "Irons" was going to rain shells on Ticonderoga, the artillery positions would be somewhere in the general direction that a sleek and streamlined motorcycle was traveling. The unique, gunmetal black, bike was built from the directions of blueprints stolen from the 1964 World's Fair exhibit at the New York Met. It took its rider four years to salvage from destroyed Ogre Tanks and shot down Hunter Killers, and another year to build. Silent as a mistress in the morning, and quick as dreams, there wasn't a faster machine on the planet. Its engineer had on a black helmet with a full tinted visor. Twin streaks of blue trailed done the top. There was no noise emitted from the rotary electric engine. The only sign of its passing came from the whipping winds of winter and the rustle of foliage against black combat trousers that had a single red stripe that ran down both outer seams of the pant legs. Tree branches scratched and caught at a well-worn, black, double breasted uniformed field jacket with crimson stitching and a single silver eagle's wing patch on his arm.

It was a tiring experience going off road into the rugged country that was uncharted. Every other mile was the weeded remains of some great mansion or compound that had been featured in an entertainment magazine a long time ago. Now a great tree grew through the middle of their foyers and the grounds littered with moldy and decaying goods burgled then returned when they became useless overnight.

Reaching a cliff face, the rider put his foot into the ground, drifting his cycle to a skidding halt. With a long sigh he took an expansive look over the destruction of a civilization he barely remembered anymore. Green holographic readouts and sensors within the visor scanned the area within range. It was the same conclusion as the past eight hours.

"Damn …" He muttered as he tapped on the side of his helmet. "Echo Base, this Ghost Rider Two-Zero. Come back."

"This is Echo Base, Ghost Rider, report."

"I'm in sector five, grid … E and there's nothing out here. It's quiet, really quiet."

"Negative, Ghost Rider, Recon flight suggest movement in your area in the last ten hours."

"Well unless the machines are tunneling, it must be some sort of gang activity."

"Until you have confirmation, you are advised to continue on scouting mission. They're out there somewhere, Ghost Rider."

"Copy …"

"Echo Base out."

A frustrated hand punched the button on the side of his helmet. Flicking eyes up, the Ranger started to notice that it was getting dark. The last thing he wanted to do was spend the night in a no man's land. But while the youth in him just wanted to pack up and leave, the other side, the kind that had been born into this life, knew how valuable the ground was. If the Machines occupied the highlands, there would be hell to pay for the poor bastards that would have to capture it from them.

With a visible breath in the chill of the coming night, he turned his bike. But before he began looking for a campsite, he noticed a path that hadn't been there before. With a deep frown, he quietly dismounted. The underbrush rustled as he hiked across the darkening forest till he reached the path. The souls of his grimy motorcycle boots cracked and crunched on a hard surface. Brushing away the overgrowth with his foot he crouched and studied what he found. It was cracked and aged cobble stone. He began ripping the tall grass growing between the cracked plaster that held the bricks in place. Placing his hand down he felt the blunted edges of the broken stone, and brushed off the erosion of decades worth of decay and abandonment.

There was a path here that led up the hill. The problem was that as far as the old navigational charts were concerned, there was nothing up there. The wealthiest of homes was a mile downward. He had come this far up on a hunch based on the fact that the area was closed off by make shift bushes and young trees. It was as if someone had purposely sealed off this area of the hill. If he was going to find the machines advanced engineer party, they would most likely be somewhere hidden, somewhere closed off.

The darkness was getting deeper in obscurity, the cold getting bitter, and the trees were starting to get twisted and angry faces in his weariness. But he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something going on here. It was an instinct that only became stronger when he looked up from his crotched position and saw muddled in the overgrown trees there were two broken antique lamp poles twisted and awkwardly tipping in the four decades worth of nature that engulfed them. Together they had once flanked a rusted gate that he saw the back of, its front blocked by the same planted trees and wild shrubs that brought him here.

It didn't take a detective to deduce that once, long ago, someone had tried very hard to erase all evidence of whatever was at the end of this cobble stone road. The bike wired soundlessly as the dark figure quietly stalked into the night following the weeds and stone over a winding rural road. Every half a mile he came across the same lamp poles, each in its own state of disrepair.

The bike rushed over a narrow road and into an open plaza of tile. The path ended in front of tall white wall of eroded granite that was mounted by a weather worn staircase of cracked and chipped marble. All around where rusted and gutted cars that had weeds and roots growing through their inner workings. Drifting to a halt the young man lifted his visor. The high granite cliff face made an "L" shape that enveloped the plaza in a dead end. To his left was a steep descent into the tangled forest and undergrowth. Beyond he saw lantern posts and railings that signaled that there was once a walking trail, but it seemed that nature had long since reclaimed it completely. Whoever had lived here last had gone to great pains to make sure that no one would ever find it again. It was a sentiment that gave the young Ranger an edge when he looked to the crumbling marble staircase. There was only one way left to go …

And that was up.

Dismounting, he slipped his helmet off and hung it on his handle. His steps were cautious and silent on the slippery broken tiles that had gathered the frozen accumulation of the nightly snowfall. Walking amongst the rusted ruins of automobiles he paused and studied them. Every parked vehicle was a make and model that he didn't recognize. Their designs were at least ninety to sixty years outdated. Once they were considered antique collector's items. Even before that, they were posh machines of extreme wealth, driven around old Hollywood to the flashed reflections of photographer's bulbs on their polished hoods. They were the kind of cars that young girls in rural Iowa to the row houses in Brooklyn had once dreamed of. They were the fantasy vehicles of a fairy godmother's gift that carried them to Shriner's Auditorium on the arm of Bogart to receive their Academy Award. But now almost a century later these princess carriages and collectors prizes were all headstones and buried remains of this mechanical graveyard of cars that no one even knew or cared existed once.

The staircase was chipped, cracked, and was missing steps on the ascent to the top. The marble was in disrepair, exposed to decades of draught, El Nino Storms, and Santa Anna winds. It was eroding into nothing as was the rest of this place. Weeded vines trailed and snaked downward, wrapping the discolored handrails like the tentacles of time itself trying to drag it into the abyss. The young man was careful were he stepped as the marble began to give way underfoot. He didn't look up till he was at the precipice. Then he saw what was trying to be hidden so deep in the vaults of decay and obscurity.

At the plateau on top of the hill was a palace of dreams, dreamt a century ago. It was a tall, imposing compound of the likes that had never been seen before by the Ranger. It was somewhere between a regal palace and mansion. It had round towers on the ends of its red tile roofs that were almost laid bare. Piles of red dust lay at the feet where storm and age had stripped them. It had balconies that looked over a vast yard of tall grass and weeds. Wild shrubs that had once been cut into decorated shapes had grown feral, their vines and snags uprooted and toppled statues of Grecian goddesses. It was an enormous and lavished Hollywood castle from another time and another world that was even older than the civilization in ruins below them. It was a ridiculous and over the top Sepulcher on the mountain tops where desert and sea meet that fueled the dangerous delusions and avarice of a horrible sickness of the mind. It truly was out of this world, out of any world, a unique tower of babble that had no rhyme or reason for existence but to establish the supreme authority of one's own self-importance.

Walking across the yard the young Ranger stopped and looked into the algae crusted and stagnate water of the weather worn and overgrown fountain that stood right in the middle of the vast yard. There were three stone benches that covered the perimeter around it. All were cracked, off angle, or split completely in the slow decay of time. Spying something of interest, the youth reached into the icy and frigid water to retrieve the floating item. It was the head of one of the Grecian Goddess that had fallen over. With a hard frown the young man studied the face half covered in forty years of putrid slime. It might have been his state of mind, the edge in the frigid winter evening, but for a chilling moment he thought he was holding the head of an actual young woman. With a hard, visible, breath he turned and looked out at each commissioned statue lying in the tall grass. The detail, the flaws, the personality chiseled into stone. He pushed aside the nagging question that every human would think of when faced with the unspoken possibilities of their origin. The head fell with a heavy thud on the grass as he continued on.

There was an explosion of dust that disturbed the stale decay when a boot kicked open the two double doors. Decayed warped oak collapsed in a heap on the tile floor of the manor as the bitter cold of post-apocalyptic winter blew away forty years of dust and nightmares. The Ranger's silhouette stood against the last grey light of the day as he looked inside the manor's lobby. The darkness receded with a click of a flashlight, his eyes scanning what was in front of him. The décor, the walls, and columns on the inside were something out of a harem, the opulence of a sultan's palace or pharos throne room. The tall dark walls were sponged with designs of golden stains. The columns were ivory like the antiquity of Rome. Its marble floors gave each step a thunderous echo. With each plant and lift he stepped away from the frigid desolation of tomorrow and into the horrid stench of yesterday.

It had truly been a long time since anyone had stepped foot inside this place, a crumbling monument to some great lost kingdom that the world did not remember. A palace that was sealed away and made taboo by those who had inherited it. Not to be sold, repurposed, or sanctioned for preservation. It was truly a hidden tomb obliterated from any record or accounting. The young Ranger didn't need to know why, when a cold chill remained to run air raids down his back. This was a dark place … as dark as it gets. Meant to be forgotten for a good purpose, he didn't need to see it to know it, to feel it. Even forty years later there was a sickness that lingered. A sleepless madness that seeped through the walls and tainted everything the beaten chromemag's beam touched. The air was thick and heavy with old emotions of sorrow, loneliness, and fear …

Always fear.

The youth paced his way into the dark and dusty lobby of the great manor. Stopping to give it a detailed study he came across a giant painting on the wall over a mantle of trophies. The desert at midnight had a strange solitude in its use of color and texture that was almost therapeutic. But it was the painted centerpiece of a coyote that was staring back at him through the water colors that ensnared him. There was something allusive and yet fascinating in the yellow of the solitary animal's eyes. Before he knew it he was nearly hypnotized. He might have even lost himself in the Coyote if the smell wasn't strong enough to break its yellow eyed spell over him. He read the plaque and found that it came from the Nevada Chamber Of Commerce, a painting from the last of some old Indian tribe of the southwest. The young man gave a hard shake of his head and considered that staring at painting like this could give anyone a found disposition toward deserts … and odd dreams of Coyotes.

Under the painting was a mantle of trophy statues encased in decades of dust and covered in cobwebs. Grabbing the statue at random, he chose a sleek and slim one, easy to hold. It was a greening, golden, art-deco depiction of a man. Squinting, he blew away the remaining dust to read the plague of the trophy below.

"Academy Award … Lead Actress … 1938 … Rosalind Brydon. Heh, 1938, huh? The worms that ate you have great-grandkids, who have great-grandkids at this point, Brydon."

He snorted disrespectfully and dropped the coveted award unceremoniously on the table with a clack. He saw three more Oscars on the mantle and went through them. This Brydon woman seemed to have won best supporting actress in 1950. But it was when he picked up the last trophy that he frowned.

"Lead Actress, 1950 … Josephine Booker? Who the hell is Josephine Booker?" He muttered.

Suddenly something stirred in the corner of his eyes. A flutter of fabric and the whip of something in motion flew just out of his vision. The flick of leather off the back hip and the click of a trigger beat the sound of an Academy Award striking a table. In the youth's hand was a large black revolver, customized with heavy barrel and trigger guard that looked like it belonged on a saber. It was a new weapon with six shots capable of blowing a man's ribcage from his body and tearing away the servo pistons off of a T-800. But his target seemed to be nowhere near to those kinds of threats.

A white veil fluttered in the new air, seemingly coming alive at the mention of the last name ever spoken in the old manor. Pushing his coat back, the scout holstered his weapon and shown his light on the veil. The yellowed cloth was draped over a painting that hung on the far wall, on the other side of an entertainment and sitting room. With one hand he ripped it off to a shower of dust and age.

His eyes narrowed at a painting that was almost photographic. A young woman lay on a bed of pure white sheets. Her long golden locks brushed out in perfect tresses that glowed in the light of a flowery country garden in a window. She was pale and beautiful, a birth mark doting just above her lip. Her green eyes seemed piercing in a tainted sense of sorrowful innocence. A wedding dress of pure regal silk covered her slim body, her slender arms reaching above her head. She looked purely angelic in the most idealistically romantic reimaging of a woman in the moments before being made love too on her wedding day.

She would've been hypnotizing to anyone, anyone but the young man who was suddenly flooded with recognition. He'd seen that face before. He knew those eyes and that look. It was an allusive memory from a little boy's life before his world came crashing down. But more immediately it was a face floating in the most recent images just at the tip of his brain.

And then he remembered.

Slowly he looked over his shoulder, back to the yard. She was out there, overturned on the overgrown lawn, her decapitated head floating in the slime of ages past. The goddess was the woman in the painting. It only made more horrifying sense when the young detective studied the picture and read the piece of art for what it was to the woman who commissioned it. Draped on a marital bed, her slender arms raised over her head in what looked like inviting leisure. But a sharper eye taught in the ways of deduction saw the iron bands, shadowed by the headboard, clamped around her wrists from each bed post. Her look of sorrow, played as the loss of innocence, was in fact the look of a defeated captive in the throes of submission.

He remembered holding the stone head in the yard and suddenly he felt a deep and dark surge of disgust in his gut. He knew the signs, the patterns of the worst psychotic killers of the age. He had hunted them all his life. With that in mind, he'd ponder the yard, and wonder how many other alluring young women had been handcuffed to a marital bed …

How many were memorable enough to have their statue in the yard?

"Lavender's blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender's green
When you are king, dilly dilly,
I shall be queen."

Muscles suddenly tightened tautly like a spring ready to exert energy into action. From the next room there was sudden illumination to the sound of a woman singing and rickety rolling. He drew his weapon on reflex and moved soundlessly to the dusty wall. Hand Cannon placed next to his head, the Ranger peaked from cover to see a projector behind a dusty love seat. On screen was the same woman from the painting, the same woman who was carved into a ruined statue. The secret princess wore a silken skirt, peasant's blouse and a sash as she danced through a soundstage forest in a scene of an old black and white, fairy Tale, movie serial. Watching the youthful woman sway, sing, and dance were two figures slouched on antique love seat. Together they whiffed of the second foulest stench the young Ranger ever smelt.

"Who told you so, dilly dilly,
Who told you so?
'Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,
That told me so."

In a rush of air the youth broke cover and slipped into a deadly angle. Satisfied that he had the drop on the audience, he stepped out of the dark to take them unawares. His shadow was tall on the wall as his silhouette stood in front of the projector that ran the film of this beautiful princess in disguise. He pointed the Hand Cannon at the two slumped figures and drew the trigger.

"Don't move!" His voice took a gravely frightening tone that boomed through the empty manor in an attempt to scare any fight out of the scavengers. But it was all in vein and needless. The two figures didn't react, nor would they ever again.

Since he had walked into the crumbling palace he had smelled a god awful stench that he should've been familiar with. Now he knew where and who it was coming from. Two slumped skeletons lay intertwined together, one holding the other in a possessive grip. The older of the two had on a dressing robe and nothing else, a cup of china sat next to her at a dusty end table. Her hair was stringy and grey, still pinned in a frizzy tight bun. The old woman was holding onto the other skeleton which was freshly decayed. He could tell immediately that these two had died separately from one another. That was a time frame that was apart by decades. The newer of the two skeletons still had greyed eye balls in her skull, and long raven curls. But what he didn't understand, as he knelt in front of the younger, was why she was dressed in an old 40's wedding dress and why a black ribbon was tied around her throat.

"Lavender's green, Dilly dilly,
Lavender's blue.
If you love me, Dilly dilly,
I will love you."

"What's your story?" He muttered running his hand over the silken bodice of the dress.

"She wanted to be just like her …"

Quickly the Ranger reacted in a ready position for a fight. Behind him there was a slender figure with a youthful, highly polished, English accent. He pointed his weapon at the shadowy girl and stood to full height. She had her back to him, staring at the screen. Her hips moved and swayed with the choreography of the musical number as if she knew it by heart. The Ranger watched her cautiously and studied her alertly. She had a red ribbon tied in long regal ringlets in a Christmas bow. Her white nightgown was see through in the projector light. There was also the same distinctive black ribbon around her pale neck. By no means was this girl a scavenger or hill gang member that the youth had ever seen. She was clean, unblemished, and had the wrong accent for this part of the world.

"She watched all of her movies, learned all of her lines … spoke them as if they were a language of its own." The girl spoke through her humming along of the song. "Her Gammy used to really like it. They'd read the lines of her movies together all the time, her brother was the writer of the scripts, you know?" She motioned to the corpse of the old woman. "She used to dress up like her for Gammy, put on recreations of the movies like plays … and her gammy would just love it." She sashayed in step with the woman on screen. "One day she was going to be a big star … That's what her Gammy would wake her up in middle of the night to kiss into her sweaty skin." She whispered dazedly.

The ranger turned for only a moment to look at the corpses of the women, one in the dressing robe, the younger in the wedding dress, before he turned to the girl. "How do you know that?" he glared.

The girl stopped her movement. "Isn't it obvious?" She asked with a shrug of pale shoulders.

Her peer frowned. "Not to me." He replied.

The girl turned around to face him. "Me neither." She gave a girly grin of mischief.

"It's you …"

"Isn't it always?" She replied with a wiggle of eyebrows.

He slowly lowered the Hand Cannon in a wash by old nostalgic memories of happier times and strange nights. It had been a long time since a small boy slept on a child's bed that had once been occupied by his mother and father in their early years of love. And yet the girl that used to meet him there when he closed his eyes hadn't aged a day. She was still a teenage girl. It had been so long since he had been able to place her in his memories.

He had forgotten the young, beautiful, full face of the pale girl who made his nights fun. He still could recall the way her eyes lit up when she smiled and the endless collections of goofy faces that made a foolish small boy laugh and laugh. He always knew she was sad, and that she had come to play with him to feel happy, to feel loved, and to be safe while bad things were happening. She was supposed to be a secret, his secret … he wasn't supposed to tell anyone she existed. It was a mistake he had only made once in his life. He had told his parents of his nightly play time adventures. His mom and dad didn't say a word. They shared a knowing glance between one another in a wordless connection of the mind. Later his mother questioned him relentlessly that night about his whereabouts while he was sleeping. Meanwhile his father spent nights away from home, looking for someone … based on the stories for this dream girl. He never found the woman he was looking for, and the little boy would forever blame himself for being the reason his father wasn't home when his mother was murdered.

And it was all because he couldn't keep a secret, keep their secret.

"You don't remember me do you?" He asked.

The teenage girl seemed hyperactive, swaying and humming to the music that seemed almost a part of her. But to the question she stopped. Tilting her head, she gave a bite to her lip. He watched her frown playfully and waltz up to him. Her eyes searched his face, her slender hand tracing his cheek. There was a light of recognition based on the tactile spark of their touch and yet she didn't know him. But their attachment was formed almost instantaneously. He placed his hand on the back of her head as she cupped his face.

"I'll never forget now." The girl was glassy eyed and emotional.

She had been searching for a safe place, somewhere to hide from those who chased her through her nights. How many times they had captured her and took her down, down, down into … The Basement. But almost by happenstance had she found a safe harbor somewhere that no one would find her. In the arms of someone she couldn't help but love for the very first moment she laid eyes on the stranger. She knew almost instinctively that he'd protect her as much as she could love him.

She tossed her arms around his neck and squeezed hard. Tears were in her eyes as she buried her face in his matching curls gratefully. There was familiarity in the way his arms wrapped around her waist. It was not the first time he had hugged this girl, not the first time she had come to him to share desperate affection. His eyes were squinched shut, absorbing her into him, as she planted kisses all over his face before burying her head into the crook of his neck. The old feelings of instinctual love reminded him of how hard he had looked for her all those fresh painful nights when his innocent world was falling apart after his mother's murder. It seemed almost criminal for her to reappear now, so many years later, to see him when there was nothing left of the boy who loved her so much.

"Do you know what I lost the last time you went away?" He whispered in her ear.

To this she gave a kiss to his cheek and looked into hardened eyes. They weren't the eyes of a sixteen year old, but then neither was hers. The girl was quiet a moment, conflicted by the things she didn't understand that he was saying to her. It gave him proof, without a shadow of a doubt, that she hadn't remembered him at all. The consciousness of that epiphany was the first jerk in another self, the room smelling of blood and old fish stew. There were pained groans in the background of a beaten older man man in a chair, sobbing from his interrogation of things he would not tell the brooding and dangerous man the teen grew into.

Sensing that he was about to awaken, the girl quickly gave him a suprise kiss to enrapture his attention once more. When they came apart she gave her most dazzling, playful, smile. "Come on …" She nipped his nose with hers lovingly. "Let's go have some fun." She giggled and took his hand with both of hers.

She gave him a hard playful tug. But he didn't budge. "Come on!" She tugged harder, hoping the setting would change to something else, something safe. But they remained in the decrepit Hollywood manor. She turned around and saw that he was touching his nose. There was something in the affection that had triggered. He remembered a story, a vision of imagination of someone else's familiar signature of love told to him by a drunken father. The nip of the nose, the smelling of hair, the way her eyebrows telegraphed all of her emotion. She wasn't sure how, but he was starting to suspect something, starting to suspect an identity that she thought was impossible for him to know.

"Tell me about them."

His voice was hardened behind an accusatory curiosity of the bodies in front of them. She smiled and shifted her eyes. "Why?" She asked with a blow off. "Who cares, they're not important. Let's just hang out somewhere." She reached up to her tippy-toes and with a playful pull of the lapels of his jacket, she kissed him again. But when they came apart with a smack her smile was starting to become damaged when she saw that he was still looking at her with the eyes of an adult and not a boy.

"In a minute … tell me about her, the old woman."

A flash of fear came over the teenager's face. She bit her lip and averted her eyes away from the matching ones that were looking right through her. "I don't know …" She lied with a shrug.

"You said that the woman in the wedding dress, she used to perform for her, dress up like the one in the movies." He pressed.

"No …" She shook her head stepping away from him. "I … no, that's not what happened." She stuttered. Suddenly, the girl fingered the black ribbon tied around her supple throat, frightened of some lost memory that had been unearthed by the harsh questioning.

"Then what did happen?" He asked suddenly more aggressive than before.

"Nothing … I don't know." She turned her back to him, her voice high and petulant.

The man started to notice the girl was rubbing her wrists in muscle memory. He was reminded of the painting, the look on the woman's face. "This one died at least thirty years, before the woman in the wedding dress." He continued to hammer away.

"Who cares, god, like it's important?!" She lashed out in a voice of frazzled entitlement. The girl reached for his hand. "Let's just go!" She gritted her teeth in a feral snarl that was not the nature of the girl, but of someone she had become over time away from this place.

"It is important!" He replied back with a snap of a man with the exact temperament. "I have never seen this place before in my life. And you wouldn't have shown me this if it wasn't important!" He grabbed the girl and pulled her against him so she could not escape.

"Tell me!" He gave her a hard shake.

The girl suddenly gritted her teeth and gave him an aggressive shove back. "It wasn't my fault!" She screamed at him. She shook her head. "She, she wouldn't let me leave … there was a party, a party down on the boulevard and they invited me to go, me! I'd never been to a party before, much less a Hollywood party and she wouldn't let me leave!" She sobbed suddenly holding her head as if some violent and sudden storm of guilt was tearing her apart. "She kept saying that I wasn't safe, that no one was ever safe. She said it over and over again while she handcuffed me to the bed." She hugged herself rocking back and forth. "They all left her, Josephine, mommy, and now me. But she wasn't going let me leave her, I … I was sick, and she had to take care of me. God gave me to her, that I belonged with her … too her." She finally looked back at the man. Her face melted in a moment of heart break and fear. "She was commissioning a statue." She sobbed. He turned back to the lobby, to the painting, and knew what that meant.

"I went into the forbidden wing …" She looked up to a corded off staircase in the obscured shadows, I found the bedroom." She nodded as if reading his mind. "The silk bed of cobwebs, with nothing but golden hair on a skeleton covered in layers of dust!" The girl shook her head. "I waited till she was finished with her nightly visit, till she left, and then I used the lubricant …" She paused and shuttered hard. "I freed myself." A hand reached out to comfort her, but the trauma of the many awful nights in a lavished bedroom caused her to flinch away from any contact.

"I grabbed my things and was going to go away, but I knew that she'd find me, that she wouldn't stop till I was back in that bed right next to Josephine. So I went downstairs …" She looked at the body of the old woman, tears running freely from her pale cheeks. "I was just going to knock her out, I only wanted some time to get out, I, I didn't mean to hit her so hard!" She sobbed and grabbed the now grown man's leather jacket pleading with him to understand it wasn't her fault.

"You killed her."

She shook her head feverishly. "No … Daddy, Daddy said that it wasn't my fault. He, he said that I did the right thing. He, he'd take care of everything. He'd get mommy out of Pescadero, that he'd get me into High School, a real high school, like in Grease! … He said he'd make it all go away." She nodded to herself. "Daddy said it wasn't my fault!" She reassured him as she reassured herself. She hugged onto the man she loved so suddenly, so deeply. She threw herself against him and held him tightly nuzzling her nose against his curls.

"Daddy said it wasn't my fault!"

Acknowledgements

"Laura Plamer's Theme – Angelo Badalamenti"

"Lavender's Blue - Lily James"