Chapter Text
There is something charming about Mexico that I hadn’t been expecting. In some ways it is like Spain, with the walkable cities, the smell of food that hangs in the air, the constant chatter of Spanish-speaking people who don’t care about how loud they are or about anything else. It’s nice. It’s a carefree kind of place. At least the parts we’d been to.
Mel and I have chosen Mexico to be our final destination in our around the world trip because it is right underneath the U.S and also is cheap. We could do a lot with very little and have one last hurrah before packing our things one final time and going back to New York. Already we are looking at apartments in Washington, where Mel has gotten into Georgetown with a decent scholarship to boot, because of course she did. I expected nothing less of her big brain. I would attend an online University to finish off my foundation courses, the boring ones I’d gotten done during my spare time while I traveled so now it will be math and random art classes and a few english courses for me and then I will be moving on to the big leagues- learning about the human brain and what makes it tick. Simple enough. Mel will be majoring in education with a focus on early childhood education, and minoring in world art history. She’d been interested in history and how it pertains to art and architecture before we’d gone on our little adventure, but our travels have only amplified her love. She’s picked up nearly a dozen different books in the past year, all of which are big and fat and heavy and ended up needing to be mailed to her dad’s place because of how much space they took up; all of them are about art. From the statues in Greece and Rome to the architecture in Italy to the paintings and their transformative eras in all different parts of the world, she absorbed all the information like a sponge and talked to me about them until she was out of things to share. It was interesting, I have to admit, but I think it would be hard for me to not like anything she likes. Or love anything that she loves.
And, as she has discovered more of herself in our two years abroad, so have I. I’ve found that I like to dance in loud, dark clubs and enjoy drinking piping hot tea in the early mornings, and like watching old foreign films- bonus points if they’re being played in a tiny theater- and that I love, love, love, the music played by people on the street. Mel and I have danced in public more times than I can count, and it’s all because of the music that gets played by people trying to earn a buck on some corner. Something about it makes me feel like I’m existing in some alternate time where there are no phones, no cameras, no modern day life. Just people living in the present like there isn’t a promise of tomorrow. It makes me want to take the moment and roll with it until the song ends and Mel and I pull apart, breathless, but sizzling with something alive. She didn't like the public-ness of it at first, but eventually she got over her shyness and would happily take my hand.
Then there is of course, the fact that living and traveling with Mel the past two- almost three- years has only made me realize more how much more perfect she is than I’d originally thought, and that I love her more than anything else in the world. I’d move mountains for her. Would burn the world down for her. Would trade my soul away. For. Her. She is all that I think about when I find myself alone. All that I dream about when I sleep. All that I seek to please in those times when we are deciding what to do next. I’m obsessed with the way that she smells, like cherries and vanilla and a spicy warmth that makes me want to hold her close and never let go. I’m struck constantly by her beauty, which has only gotten more pronounced as her teenage softness has started to dissipate as she enters her early twenties. Her entire being is something I find myself entranced with. Everything about her perfectly crafted for me.
And it seems to me that she feels just the same. She offers a place or an activity that she knows I’ll have the most fun in. Nightclubs and bars and places spewing heavy metal and liveliness that she would never pick for herself and probably wouldn’t consider at all if not for me. She curls up next to me in the quiet of the night when she’s finally kicked the blanket onto the floor and decided she was cold without it after all. She hums something soft and satisfied in her sleep when I hold her back, and when she wakes with me still there she smiles and glows like she couldn’t be any happier. She encourages me, dotes on me, but also looks out for me when my brain gets in the way of the smart or good choice I should make instead. We argue, we laugh, we have fun, we cry, we grow. We do it all together. If that isn’t what love is then I don’t know what to call what we have.
We’re two weeks out from the final day of our world tour and tonight we decided to hell with the walking and exploring. We’re tired after a long day of seeing Sonora and want a quiet night in. I offered to grab the food and she offered to give the hotel room a quick clean and find a movie to watch.
Street tacos packed and stored away in a heavy bag, horchata and fruit stored and balanced on top precariously, and a healthy amount of beer in my other hand, I make my way down the long road to the hotel we’ve picked. It is tall and glamorous, but cheaper than anything we’ve stayed in in a while. Mexico is just cheap in general though, this food alone barely breaking the fifteen dollar mark.
This road is lined with vendors, lights on and people out and talking and trying to either spend their money or make some. I liked the noise of it. The constant hustle and bustle of a place that smells like home cooking. As much as I would like to stop and go through every last thing on all the tables around me, I can’t. I’ve bought so much shit the last two years that I already am trying to figure out what to do with it. A little bit here and there has added up, and though Mel and I have shipped a lot of things to her dad’s, the amount of crap I have has grown exponentially. I don’t have any room for a beaded bracelet or mini maraca or a pair of colorful sandals. So I have to keep walking and do my best to avoid making eye contact with all the people here.
That is, until I get to one of the last tables on the street. It’s a long, narrow table, covered with a black, green and tan woven cloth, tassels hanging off the end. On top are jewelry organizers of every color and material. Some new, some old. All filled with jewelry of every kind. Bracelets, earrings, necklaces, anklets, rings and charms. So many charms. Behind this mountain of jewelry is a lone old woman. Her skin dark and wrinkled with age, her face round and kind, her hair long and gray and twisted into one very thick braid. She and I make eye contact at the same time, and something about her expression draws me right in.
I walk up to her stand, expecting to maybe buy some silly little charm- something that I won’t altogether care about in the end but might like for this brief moment- instead my eyes zero in on one singular ring and I damn near drop the beer.
It is a simple silver band with a cluster of bright blue gems in the shape of a flower, in the very center is a slightly larger, clear gem. Running down the length of the band is a white line, another type of stone? I don’t know my jewelry all that well.
What strikes me isn’t its beauty, because if I’m being honest the ring isn’t anything special compared to any of the rest in the box, it is the fact that it’s a damn near perfect replica of a former family heirloom in Mel’s family.
I learned about it while we spent nearly two months in Africa, visiting her family that still lived there. Her grandma, a lanky old woman with dusty gray hair and skin lined deep with her ninety three years of life, spent almost the entire two months confined to a soft bed, her eyes glazed over with near blindness, her mouth puckered in a constant pout. Despite how frail she seemed, she loved to chatter and be in on all the action. Her bed was center stage in the living area, which was also the dining area and the entry room, and so Mel and I got to know her incredibly well. Mel caught her up on her life since she’d last talked with her, and I tried to keep her satisfied with the stories of my own life.
One night, maybe three weeks into our stay, her grandma- Tafna- gathered everyone around her- Mel’s young cousins, her aunts and uncles, and us, and began telling us a story.
“ It was so so cold,” she began, shaking her head in memory of the night, “ and real quiet. No birds, no crickets, not a sound could be heard. It was like death itself was standing outside my door. I knew right away it was going to be a bad night. There are things out there, things we don’t understand. Got it? Just because it isn’t always dark out don’t mean there aren’t things we can’t see, and on that night there was one of those things.
“ A beast!” She smacked her hand down onto her blanketed lap, Mel and her cousins had jumped at the outburst. “ I heard it, feet crunching on the ground in heavy footsteps, its whole body casting long shadows into my house and my word, the sound of its breathing! Like it was starving for air! Never heard nothing like it since.” She shuddered, “ I grabbed my big knife, the one over the stove over there,” she pointed exactly towards where a long, dull and scratched blade hung over the stovetop and I felt a spring of unease at the fact she knew just where to point. To my knowledge the blade wasn’t one that was ever used, but kept in the kitchen anyways. “ and I sat by the front door, waiting and listening as this thing made laps around the house. I counted the cracks in the tile floor, and the higher I got the closer he got, like he knew just what I was doing. I sat for what felt like hours and by the end of it my whole body was heavy as rocks, I was so tired and sore. It was a spell. I know it was. This beast was casting something nasty on me so I couldn’t fight him and fear took me over. And just when I thought I might never be able to stand up, he came crashing into the house, a great big knife of his own in his fat hand, and he was on me like it was the last thing he could do on Earth.
“ But I don't give up! No!” She shook her head vehemently, eyes closed, “ I fought him with every ounce of strength I had! I took that big knife and I swiped at him and I scratched at him and I kicked him and I didn't stop till he fell back.”
She paused, her pout coming back, her jaw working as she chewed on her thoughts, and when it seemed like the story was done, Mel’s littlest cousin, Azmar (or Marmar as so many called him) spoke up in his little voice and asked what happened next?
Grandma Tafna looked at all of us then, something that made me very uncomfortable considering she was almost completely blind and shouldn’t have known where we all were, and held up her right hand, her ring finger missing almost all the way down to the knuckle. “ He got my finger is what happened next! He said something to me and grabbed my hand and he got my finger with my ring.”
“ It was such a pretty ring,” she nearly sobbed, “ such a lovely thing with a flower on it and a pretty gold on the band part. I got it from my mama and she got it from her mama and she got it from hers. It had something special to it. My mama said so herself. Made whoever wore it that much better and smarter and lovelier. First time I wore it out of the house I met my husband and I never took it off since. Not to do nothing. But that nasty beast took it and by the end of the year he had taken my sight from me too.”
I looked over to see Mel’s entire family enraptured, Mel’s eyes big and watery, her hand to her throat. Grandma Tafna looked at me then, and I straightened slightly, skin crawling at the depth of her milky white gaze, and I couldn’t stop the wild thought that maybe there was some truth to this beast. I’ve liked to pretend in the past that there were things greater than the obvious out there, but never have I taken it so seriously, not like her. She was deathly serious about this monster she had a run in with, and if I didn't know any better I would say she somehow knew that I just didn't quite buy it, at least not until just now.
“ He brought a curse down on this family when he took that ring,” she looked away from me, “ cursed my sight away. Cursed my husband to die in a quake. Cursed my kids to never marry right. And cursed my grandbabies with who knows what!” She smacked her hand down again and everyone jumped, myself excluded.
After that the story pretty much ended. The beast never came back and by all accounts of the neighbors, not one of them had heard or seen a thing. The ring was the only tangible thing that had been taken, her finger was left just outside the door.
The ring was brought up multiple times during the remainder of the visit, talked about lovingly like a family member that had died young. I wouldn’t have thought any one object would hold such significance to a family, but clearly I was wrong. Mel became just as enraptured by the ring as well, making an odd comment about it every so often about what must have happened to it or if the beast knew what it was when he came since it was the only thing taken. I just wanted to know what the beast was in the first place. And if her Grandma could secretly still see.
The ring, she had showed us a picture, was just the same as this one, only the colors were different. Where the original had been a yellow flower with a red center and a gold band with a black line, this one was blue and silver and white. A prettier combination in my opinion, but still, visually it was the same, right down to the number of stones.
Mel would lose her shit at the sight of this thing. I could imagine her already, crying over it with joy. The once dead family member turned out to have survived all along, just born again in a place all the way across the world.
I handed the old woman a twenty, told her to keep the change in my broken Spanish, and she just about had a heart attack at the sight of the bill, insisting I take something else. I refused, said a quick goodnight, and rushed back to the hotel room.
Mel swings the door open while I fumble the key card. “ They have Rocky!” she beams, already reaching to lighten my load.
“ Really?” I yank off my shoes and rather than sit at the dining table I stay standing, wringing my hands nervously, the ring a thousand pound weight in my pocket. On my way up the elevator two things occurred to me and turned my stomach into a big ball of knots.
The first thing is that I was giving her a ring. One that, if my memory is correct and I know Mel as well as I think I do, will mean a lot to her. It won’t be like in the past when I’ve bought her jewelry. Those were meaningful, but not like this. Not like now. This ring means a lot to her family, whether or not it’s the real one doesn’t matter. What this ring represents isn’t like what the small gifts have in the past. It’s something much more important, much bigger, than I realized when I bought it.
The second is that I should have bought a box to go with it.
Mel doesn’t immediately notice my nervousness, instead she’s busying herself with the bag of food, taking a healthy drink from the horchata before setting it aside and unearthing the tacos, all the while chattering away about how she found Rocky near the bottom of the English for-rent section on the Hotel’s movie listing. If I was even listening I’m sure I would have been a lot more responsive, as it is, I’m tongue tied. Though the initial intent of the ring wasn’t to propose with now that the thought has sprung to life, I can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop wanting it.
Growing up the idea of marriage had evolved from a fantastical adult thing to something that is just flat out unattainable for someone like me. I stopped wanting it, thinking it just wasn’t in the cards for someone with as many problems as I have, but now? It’s not like my problems are gone, though many of them have greatly lessened by the fact that I’m not at the whims of the adults around me. I still have horrendous nightmares and outbursts of anger or panic that have me acting out and destroying things and I would say that I still struggle with authority figures, but these things are less prominent in my life. Less the center focus, more an insignificant asteroid that is my world. Mel is my sun. One that I wouldn’t have begun to thrive without. One that I would happily walk down the aisle for.
She finally notices me still standing in the entryway, a taco halfway to her mouth, and her face flashes with alarm at the obvious distress I’m in. “ August?” She sets the taco down and lettuces spills onto the table but she doesn’t even stop to clean it before rushing up to me, “ Are you alright?”
“ I-” my voice catches unexpectedly and I cough, “ I’m fine,” I nod loosely, knots twisting themselves further.
“ You don’t sound fine,” Mel drags me towards the center of the room, next to the bed where she sits me down.
It takes me a moment to realize that I’m still not talking and I stand back up, swiping my hair out of my face while I wrack my brain on how to do this.
“ August? You’re scaring me.”
I look at her then, “ sorry,” I smile, “ I’m just trying to figure out what to say.”
“ Whatever it is, it’ll be just fine.”
I laugh once, and decide fuck it. Because what’s there to be nervous about anyways? I already know she loves me. I’m just putting a ring on it is all. “ Okay,” I blow out a deep breath and take a step back, forcing my nerves to settle. “ Okay.” I repeat with a nod and Mel just looks confused now. “ Remember the day we met?” I begin, thinking back to those years ago when we were fifteen and trying to get through high school. I had walked into English class, our one class that we had together, and, almost like I knew subconsciously what she would mean to me one day, my eyes locked with hers and I just about turned back around and left the class with the wave of emotion that I felt. She was, hands down, the most beautiful person in the entire classroom, if not the entire school. Her curls were styled into a loose afro, her long sleeve shirt hung loose on her round shoulders, slipping off one to reveal a red spaghetti strap undershirt. Her jeans were baggy, just barely too big, and being held in place by a leather belt that I later found out was her dads. Her expression was kind. Kinder than anything I’d seen before. Big brown eyes, dark as night but open with curiosity about the person in front of her. Her round nose and her round face and full lips, the bottom one being chewed on on one side. She had been doodling something on the back of her notebook, but the second we made eye contact she dropped her pen and sat a little straighter. So fucking pretty. And, as I would later find out, just the right kind of person to smooth my rough edges.
“ Yeah,” she said softly, nodding.
“ Well, I think about it a lot. How I never would have guessed all the good things that would come out of the fact that Mr. Aaron sat me next to you, but I think, even if we hadn’t shared that class, and we didn't meet at all in school, I would have still found my way to you. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met, and certainly not the kind of person I would have pictured myself with when I was fifteen, but shit, if I’m not glad to be wrong. I may not have had much good luck in this life, but I haven’t felt as lucky as the day I walked into that cold classroom all those years ago.”
I step forward then, just a little, and can just make out the tears in Mel’s eyes, “ I have never loved, or felt love, like this in my entire life. I’ve never been so happy and so content and so excited. I look forward to waking up with you by my side and coming back to you at the end of the day. I think of you when I’m alone and even when I’m not. And when I imagine myself sixty years down the line, all old and wrinkly and wearing adult diapers, you’re already there with me.” I drop down on one knee, pulling the ring out of my pocket and her hands fly over her mouth, tears fully spilling down her cheeks, “ Melrose Ada Gibbons, would you give me the greatest gift of my life, and spend the rest of it with me?”
A silence stretches between us, filled only by my scared breathing and her sniffling as she works to collect herself, wiping the tears away and grabbing a tissue from the nightstand but she doesn’t even use it before throwing herself onto me, arms wrapped around my neck, head nodding furiously, “ Yes!” she sniffles, “ Without a doubt. I would love to marry you.”
Tears escape my own eyes then, as her words wash over me with heat. “ Really?”
“ Really,” she nods more, pulling away to use the tissue, and finally looks at the ring- really looks- and realizes what it is. “ Oh August!” she throws her arms back around me and starts crying harder, “ It’s perfect.”
“ I was hoping you’d think so. Sorry there’s not a box for it.”
“ I don’t care about it being in a box. It’s too pretty to hide.” She pulls away again and I grab her hand and slide the ring on, and miraculously, it fits perfectly, like it was made just for her. She ogles it, drying her tears as she does, but she’s still crying and I am too.
After a few minutes she turns back to me and with a gentleness that makes my heart race, she tucks a loose lock of hair behind my ears and we kiss, long and soft. I pull her close and hold the moment for as long as I can and it seems like she wants just the same thing, because her hands tangle into my hair and she presses further into the kiss and we fall into it entirely. Food and movie forgotten, I lift her up and set her down on the bed and she rolls on top of me.
“ I wish we could be married already,” I murmur against her lips and she smiles wide.
“ Vegas is only a few short hours away.”
I roll back over so I’m on top again, kissing her neck, “ Would you want that?”
“ Would you?”
“ I’d knock on every door in this hotel if I thought one of the guests might be able to officiate.” She giggles as I move further down her neck towards her collarbones.
“ My dad would be so mad if I got married without him there.”
“ You could always call them while I drive, it’s not like I have anyone who I’d want to see me off.”
She grabs my face and forces me to look at her, eyes searching for something in my expression, “ are you being serious?”
“ As a heart attack, Melly. If you don’t mind not having the whole grand party and custom dress, I’d love to leave right now. I’ll pay to fly them down and everything. Just say the word, and I’ll do it.”
She studies my face, and when it seems like her decision to not jump the gun is made, I start working my way down further, sliding my hands up her shirt. Not leaving just means we have more time for this, which, I have to say, doesn’t bother me one bit.
“ Okay.”
“ Really?” I say for the second time tonight, straightening out slightly, “ We can go?”
She smiles nervously, “ I never wanted a big fancy wedding anyways.”
I go back to kissing her on the lips, rushing into it with my excitement. By tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow, she will be all mine. Forever. “ Start packing the clothes, I’ll deal with cleaning the kitchen,” I say as I pull away.
We jump into action, her throwing clothes into our suitcases, me doing the dishes in the small sink and clearing the leftover food in the fridge and stuffing the unopened things into some paper bags. I wipe the counter down with a wet rag, gather all the garbage in the place and tie up the bag that now sags with the weight of all the shit in it. Mel flings crap out of the bathroom, toiletries and stray dirty clothes and the like and begins organizing it into the suitcases which are overflowing with disarray. I leave the garbage outside the door and go back to finish cleaning the place and double check that we aren’t forgetting anything. No random belongings under the beds or in the drawers, no chargers stuck in hidden sockets, no swimsuits forgotten on the balcony.
Ten minutes after we’d started we are racing down the hall to the elevator, and then racing to the front desk to check out, and then, in what felt like way to much time but I knew wasn’t all that long, I am pulling out of our parking space in the rental I’d gotten us, and Mel is working on finding us the fastest route to Vegas.
“ Wasn’t there some storm in Arizona? It’s monsoon season there right?”
“ Right,” Mel nods as I pull onto the 2 instead of the 19, heading further east, closer to New Mexico, “ I heard they were getting some serious flooding this year.”
“ I’ll just go around as much as I can. If it’s bad enough we can always stop at the airport and fly the rest of the way.” I lace my hand through hers while she continues to look over the map.
“ The Phoenix Airport is really big,” she frowns, probably thinking about the first time we’d gone to the Sky Harbor Airport and got so turned around we missed our flight and also managed to lose my phone. It was a bad day.
“ We could always go to an airport in New Mexico,” I suggest.
“ Would you mind?”
“ It’s not that out of the way.”
“ Are you sure?”
“ Positive, Melly.” I kiss the back of her hand and look over long enough to see her smiling in the low light.
For the first hour she makes her phone calls and I listen as she breaks the news to her family. Her father’s reaction was the loudest, enough so that I could hear his excited gasp through her phone and over the music from the radio. I laugh at that and he expresses his excitement for Melly, and then his excitement for the plane ride to come. Her grandparents were the next on the list of people to call, and they guffaw at the news, her grandma fretting already about dresses and floral arrangements, but Mel calms her down quickly and breaks the other set of news- that the marriage would be over with by the next 48 hours, 72 at the most. She starts crying a little at that, but we promise that the first time we renew our vows we’d talk about having something bigger. Just not now.
When the calls are done there is the smallest lapse of silence where I shut off the radio and Mel worries over the map before I grab it from her and toss it into the back seat, telling her I didn't need it, and then she starts singing Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl.
I burst out laughing, long and hard and she does too after just a few lines from the chorus, and then in the following hours we talk about nothing and everything, sometimes falling back to near hysterical fits of laughter and sometimes stopping to look at the other with such significance it makes my whole heart swell.
The clock strikes three, marking our fifth hour of the drive, and I am beginning to feel the exhaustion in my eyes. Mel is asleep already, her seat reclined slightly, a travel pillow pinned between the door and her head, her legs drawn up close. She looks too peaceful for me to ask to switch, and so I keep on driving.
As I turn to look at her for the millionth time tonight I catch sight of something in the distance. A shuddering light, like a campfire, but it looks wrong. Too big. More like a bonfire, and from what I could make of the smoke it’s all too thick, darkening the sky that is lit with the full moon. I check the road, making sure I’m not about to crash, and turn back, confused.
A streak of white escapes from where this fire is, a cloud of dust rising behind it. It moves with the kind of speed that you’d expect to see from a racecar, and not from what, as far as I could make out, was a man. I couldn’t see what he was riding, but it had to have been small. A motorcycle maybe. Something fast as all hell and able to run over open desert without so much as a hitch in its path. I check the road again, realizing that I’d started to slow down, and kick up the speed, narrowing in on 80.
I don’t get the chance to look back towards the man.
The car is wrenched from the road with enough force to send it flipping into the shoulder. The windows on the right side exploding from the impact, bursting inwards and slicing into my face. We roll once, twice, landing on the roof, loose objects flying, engine fuming and radio flickering on and off. Airbags burst with urgency, forcing me back into my seat and filling the car with hot dust. A hideous roar vibrates the frame of the car and we are jerked again, metal on metal squealing as another impact spins us nearly all the way around. And then, finally, things stop.
Blood rushing to my head, my arms hanging above me, my body entirely limp. Only my seatbelt, which had locked the second we made impact, is working as it should, holding me to my seat painfully. The radio flicks on again but I can’t hear it over the ringing in my ears. My window explodes with the tension of having it against the ground, glass falling straight down. I inhale a single breath that rattles in my chest and sizzles as it goes down.
A tiny groan beside me cuts through the ringing and immediately I sober. “ Mel!” I reach out to her, only to find my fingers slipping off her arm with blood. “ Oh god, Mel!” I fight my seatbelt, jamming my thumb into the button, but it doesn’t move. Outside I can hear fast, frantic footsteps. A pair of bare feet pace back and forth too fast for me to comprehend. They’re a blur of movement at Mel’s window. The man I’d hit. He was alive and well enough to stand. “ Hey!” The feet freeze. “ Help! Help her! Please!” I continued to fight with the seatbelt as I beg, “ Please, she’s hurt. She’s hurt.” She’s bleeding. She’s dying. “ Please!”
Lightning fast hands reach into the window, snap the seatbelt from the door, and yank Mel out. Again, all too fast for me to understand right. My brain has sped everything up, adrenaline working overdrive and whatever injury to my head only exasperating this. I suck in another breath, relief flooding despite my confusion, “ thank you,” I exhale, “ thank you.”
Sounds of a scuffle refocus me and then the sound of Mel yelping something that was more a gurgle than anything else gets my panic right back up. Whatever is going on out there isn’t right. I don’t know how I know that. I just do.
I fight harder with the seatbelt, screaming at the damn thing, ripping back my fingernails, until finally it unclicks and I scramble out of where the windshield used to be.
The man is standing, as well as Mel, his back was towards me and he’s stiff, his entire body shuddering as it curls inwards, a guttural moan escaping him. What I can see of Mel is entirely limp, only the smallest wet gasps of air coming from her as his body tightens and tightens around her, hands on her shoulders- shoulders that are looking too narrow.
“ What are you doing?” I don’t recognize my voice, it's so laden with panic. “ Hey!” I grab him with both hands, trying to pull him back. “ What the fuck are you doing?” I yell again, yanking with every ounce of strength I have, shoes sliding on the loose dirt. I may as well be a fly on his back for all he notices.
Mel gives a loud gasp and something crunches, her legs jerk, spasming underneath her. He really is holding her up by his strength alone.
Panic is a wild thing inside me when I attack him. One arm hooked around his neck, right foot kicking the back of his legs, I scream with everything in me for him to let her the hell go. “ GET THE FUCK OFF OF HER! LET HER GO! GET OFF! GET THE FUCK OFF!”
A monstrous growl shakes the air and he whirls around, throwing me off balance, eyes glowing red, blood all over his mouth, and he shoots me.
I don’t see the gun, nor do I hear the sound of it going off, but there is no other explanation for the way my head snaps back so hard I’m surprised it isn’t broken, for the teeth that shoot to the back of my throat with a burst of blood, for the pain that blacks out my vision. I stumble, falling flat on my back, completely dazed.
The pain only grows as I lay on the ground. Blood, hot as molten lava, drips down into my hair, coating my chin and neck, pooling in my ear. My vision spins with it, my body arching away like I can somehow run from the pain. But there is no running from this. I’ve been cut and burned and kicked and punched and had just about everything happen to me, but I’ve never been shot, and I didn't think it would feel like this. It’s an all consuming agony that shocks me down to my core, overpowering every last ache in my body, rewiring my brain so I can’t think.
I convulse, eyes rolling back, stomach turning, and I flip over just in time to vomit up what looked like a whole lot of blood. The sight sends the world spinning even harder and I drop onto my back again. The lava pouring out of the side of my jaw picks up some speed, boiling its way across the bottom of my lip and top of my cheek. I arch away from it again, resisting the urge to scream.
It was only when the sound of another car wreck breaks into the air that my brain finally starts working, though only slightly. I stop writhing on the ground long enough to see a whirl of something large and black twisting with the man, a chorus of loud growls and roars pounding against my ears.
Mel.
Her name spears through me, pings around my brain like a ball in a pinball machine, overpowering the pain.
“ Mel.” Again, I can’t recognize my voice, though this time for an entire other reason than earlier. I was angry before. Wild with rage and panic. Now I’m cornering in on complete devastation because there is no way, no fucking way, that she is dead.
I roll onto my stomach and slowly, I manage to get myself onto my hands and knees and crawl over to where she is.
Her arms are splayed out beside her, her shoulders bloodied and crushed inwards, her shirt is filled with gaping holes where his fingers had dug in. Her eyes are open, turned up and away from me, lips parted slightly, her head twisting at an odd angle and her neck… my heart crumbles in my chest. Her neck is missing most of its skin, tendons torn, veins sliced, artery severed, and so, so severely broken it might as well not even be attached to her body.
I collapse over her, refusing to believe, refusing to see, because if this is true, if she is gone, then there is no way I can go on. There is no me without her. No place in this world holds an ounce of interest for me, if she is never going to be by my side to share it with. No experience worth having, if she is not there as well. I press my good ear to her chest and I listen. I listen with every last fiber of my being. With every last shred of hope I have. I listen to her heart because it has to be beating in there. She has to be alive. She has to be.
But there is nothing. Not a thump. Not a shudder. Not a last bit of anything. And I begin to fall away. White hot flames washed over me, incinerating me one layer at a time. Turning every last crevice of me, of my soul, to a withering pile of ash. Because Mel is dead.
And I didn't hear the gunshot.
The thought jerks me upright, reignites whatever hope remains in me, pours life back into my dying body, because I didn't hear the gunshot. I didn't hear one of the loudest fucking sounds on Earth and it was right next to my head, which is seriously injured. I probably have hearing loss. I just can’t hear her. Her heart is beating. She’s alive in there. She’s alive.
She’s alive!
She’s alive! She’s alive! She’s alive!
Gently, gentler than I’ve ever been with anything in my entire twenty years of life, I slide one arm underneath her neck, cradling her head in the crook of my elbow, and slide the other arm beneath her knees, and I stand.
The act nearly pushes me over the edge. Almost has me falling forwards with dizziness and black spots in my vision, but I stay standing because I can’t afford to fall. I can’t afford to drop her.
She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.
I begin my walk. Heading towards the bonfire, because I am in the middle of nowhere, and they are my only hope. I don’t care that the man had come from them, or the black mass he fought. I just need to get help and I have no room to be picky. It was either I beg for their mercy, or I resign myself to a despair the likes of which will flatten my heart.
She’s alive she’s alive she’s alive.
The longer I walk the more the pain begins to weigh on me but my legs carry me on. I gasp for breath, exhaling something like fire from my lungs as the blood from the gunshot burns me from the inside out. I’ve never felt such heat. In between each labored breath comes a wave of agony that pulses down to my toes and threatens to send me tumbling into nothingness.
Shesaliveshesaliveshesalive
I flinch at a white spot in my peripheral, thinking the man has fought off the black mass and is on us, come to finish the job, but instead it’s the White Horseman. The harbinger of Day. Has Baba Yaga let him ride off on his own? He pays me no mind, his empty bone-white skull giving off an ominous glow in the moonlight, his horse huffing as he carries on. I blink and they are gone by the time my eyes open again.
Shesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesalive
The Red Horseman, harbinger of the Sun, passes me next. His horse gives off unbearable heat that only worsens the searing agony of the gunshot, cooking my flesh into the worst sunburn I’ve ever had. He, too, does not look at me. His blood red skull is haunting as heavy shadows throw his features into stark relief. The empty sockets blacker than death, I shudder and watch him clop forwards. I blink, and again, they are gone.
ShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesalive
The Black Horseman, the harbinger of Night, and as I’ve always thought, a darkness so consuming that no one could escape, begins to pass me. The final of the three, and the most frightening. Jet black head to toe, sucking in all amounts of light, reflecting nothing as though he is a black hole himself, only his skull can be made out, and it turns towards me, deliberate and slow. He leans down, midnight hand reaching out, and a familiar sweet smell invades my senses, drawing me in.
ShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveShesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesaliveshesalive
I blink and the world is swept out from underneath me, as is the weight in my hands. Arm being held tight by the Horseman, Mel slung over his shoulder, he drags me towards the bonfire, picking up speed like hell is on his heels.
Baba Yaga cackles something hideous and things refocus as horror begins to rise. What am I doing? What the actual shit am I doing? I pull against his grip, but his deathly cold hand holds strong. I dig my heels into the ground, accomplishing nothing but ripping off my shoes and shredding my skin, and I pull again, twisting and bucking and fighting.
He lets me go, throwing me to the ground with a humph and light flickers over me, as do a mess of robed people, who speak in every language imaginable. I inhale deeply and force myself up, looking for Mel. For the Horseman, but he is lost in the sea of darkness, Mel with him.
“ Mel?” I get up to my feet, heart pounding in my ears, gunshot leaking more lava, and am met with a boot to my chest, sending me back onto the ground, knocking the wind out of me. “ Mel?” I gasp.
“ What’s with the human, Heinrich?” Someone laughs.
Heinrich? “ What’s wrong with her?” Someone else sneers in disgust.
“ She’s turning,” another voice nearly croons, his voice lilting upwards like he might burst into a fit of laughter at any moment.
I pull myself up, still looking for the Horseman. For wherever he might have put Mel. All these damn people are dressed almost the exact same but I would know his face. They won’t have his skull. Nor his all black horse. They aren’t him.
Standing to the left of the bonfire I catch the silhouette of him, of the darkness he is shrouded in. He stands, staring at the flames that eat up chunks of white rocks that crumble and char faster than wood, pumping thick, oily smoke that rises too slowly into the air. Mel isn’t with him.
I manage to stand, and this time no one knocks me down, or maybe it’s that they are no longer there, because my world is ending anew and so is everything else. The edges of my vision darken and shake as I follow the Horseman’s line of sight and see exactly what has him so transfixed.
The ring catches my eye first, glinting and burning bright in the fire, the ring I’d put on her finger barely six hours ago. The ring that is supposed to be a blessing to her family, but has been overridden by the curse of mine. The curse that caused everyone who I love to die untimely deaths. That pushed my grandpa into a grave at barely 50, that drove my mother to insanity and then suicide, that swamped my grandma with dementia until her heart stopped.
The curse that ripped out Melly’s throat and broke her neck and burned her before my very eyes.