2019-08-07 - Not Today

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said, 'we are all just prisoners here, of our own device'
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast
-- Hotel California by the Eagles

Even raining, summers in Gray Harbor were when the city was at its most beautiful; a glorious three months in when the shadows felt less oppressive than their usual wont. Everything just seemed more vibrant, alive in the intangible, but detectable way that tended to reflect in the mood of its inhabitants as they whiled away the long humid, sweltering hours in a bacchanalian haze; wild parties on the beach, public dances at the Boardwalk, festivals celebrating every cultural phenomenon every weekend. Even its colors seemed to shed its normally dreary, smoky palette - undoubtedly what inspired Gray Harbor's name.

Its beauty during the season couldn't be denied, even here, where bodies lay on the ground.

Isabella Reede hated visiting the cemetery, abhorred visiting the granite headstone that marked her brother's place within the rows of the dead and damned; not because of the reminder of his loss - she remembered the fact every day, and will for as long as she lived - but because it was dishonest. Because it was a lie. There were no bones underneath the fertile earth, no vestige of his spirit wandering the parts of Firefly Forest that he loved to explore, or the beachhead where he watched her play in the waves.

Even his epitaph was a lie:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF
ISIDORE B. REEDE
MARCH 28, 1992 - APRIL 16, 2008

BELOVED SON AND BROTHER WHO HAD LEFT US TOO SOON

It never would have been so staid, so perfunctory, so formal. It wasn't what her brother would have chosen. It had been her father's choice, the necessity of the burden thrust upon him when the two women in his life were so devastated by his disappearance to make any decisions regarding the marker, or the funeral, or any of it. A way, in the end, for the former naval captain to remember his son the way he was and move on with his life. In retrospect, perhaps he had done it right all along, with the hopes that she and his wife would follow.

But she never did, and she never could. To her, it was impossible. He didn't understand.

They weren't just twins, she would have told him that if he had asked. She was a part of him, and he was a part of her - emotionally, mentally, spiritually. They knew what each other was thinking, what each other was feeling; even without a word, without a glance, without a single touch, they shared in each other's triumphs, burdens, sorrows and joys. She felt his pain just as acutely as he felt hers at the very moment of contact and infliction. It was never restrictive, or unwanted, or suffocating - after all, how often was it to find something like that in a world where human connections were so tenuous, so temporary and transient? Even as a child, she knew what she had, and she never wanted to lose it. It was a connection that transcended any mortal definition as it evolved throughout their childhood into a strange, terrifying, beautiful, uninhabited point beyond familial and unconditional love. Together, they were whole. Together, they were complete; one single, magnificently complicated entity that only looked like two separate bodies. It had been that way since they were gestating in Irene Baxter Reede's womb.

But in the end, she did lose it. She had lost it in the worst way possible, and continued to feel the loss in her bones; deep within the wells of her spirit.

The torrents falling from the sky failed to quench the rise of her boiling ire and before she knew it, she willed the surface of the marker to change. Stone scraped against digging, clawing mental fingers, chipping away at the engraved letters until all it contained was his name, and replaced them with better words, different words. Words that Isidore would have chosen.

Words that carried her one last hope for him:

And when the Earth
shall claim your limbs
then shall you
truly dance

The ground shook as if in protest. She took several steps back, mouth going dry and her heart lurching painfully into her ribs as the soil and grass before the headstone caved into an endless pit, revealing a staircase made of pale stone cutting into the encroaching black like a knife.

She knew an invitation when she saw one, her jaw setting tight on its hinges.

"It's a trap," she whispered, to whoever was listening. And she did know. This place always listened.

You could sleep, came the faint suggestion. It sounded so far away, teasing her senses with a quiet sigh. You could rest here, and wait for him.

"No."

He will come, if you stayed. If you slumbered.
Yes. Slumber.
With us.
With us.
Keep us warm. Keep us safe.
Love us the way you loved him.

"I said no."

Stubborn Leela.
Silly Leela.
Stupid Leela.

They had no right to use that name and she felt it build again, the storms within herself that threatened to rip her apart, given her inability to channel so much correctly, and it was all she could do not to lash out. Isabella shut her eyes and willed herself not to respond, frantically hunting for the mantra until she found it. It was trite, Vivian Glass had told her once. It seemed trite, but it worked, and she wasn't wrong. Try not to come from a place of anger.

She forced herself to turn on her heel, to walk away from the marker she vandalized with her mind. She could hear the faint murmuring, the inexplicable taste of mockery and satisfaction and her teeth ground together in the effort to keep walking.

The fight in you will burn out, one day.

"Maybe," she said, turning a single, ferocious green eye over her shoulder to look back at the stairs leading into the beckoning dark. "But not today."

The wind laughed. The trees shook. The grass snapped against her heels like serpents as she continued to walk away, her hands shoved deep in her pockets and her nails biting into her palms. Their atmospheric mockery reverberated across the dreamspace she presently inhabited, rattling at the cages of her pride, denting them significantly. It was loud; it lingered in her senses like echoes - wordless insults, armed with the truth, that cut deeply and dug into already existing wounds.

Wounds that felt real.

Isabella glanced down at the front of her shirt, uncomprehending fingers touching the holes rent into the fabric and the warmth of her gushing, crimson life. Drops fell off her fingers and onto the rolling grass underneath her feet. It shifted like something ominous and living, greedily drinking from them, from her.

What's the point of fighting when you keep failing when it matters?

She closed her eyes. Her legs felt numb, but she forced herself to take another step, and another. Her knees felt weak. Her stare lifted to fix on the wrought-iron gates leading into the plots. They looked so far away.

What's the point of fighting when you never win?

By the time she made it to the gates of the cemetery, she could barely stand. Her body listed roughly into cold metal, legs buckling completely, fingers caked with blood clutching against the bars. It smelled, and looked, and felt like a prison. Blood fountained from the wounds on her chest; the pain was indescribable, and unshed tears stung her eyes at the effort of hanging on for dear life. She dug her heels into the dirt.

She had to push, or she would never leave.

Isabella clenched her teeth, her face bent forward, grinding her forehead into the bars in an effort to keep her focus.

Push.

Her body refused to cooperate. She desperately fought against the encroaching strain. Red started to creep in the corners of her vision. She shook her head and tried again. She felt her blood-slickened fingers start to slip.

PUSH.

~ * ~

The last spent bullet rattled into the small metal bin next to the operating table. All those attending the surgery breathed a quiet, collective sigh.

It was over.

"She's stable, doctor."

"Good, let's close her up."

When he arrived at Gray Harbor five years ago, Doctor Allen Hayworth thought that small town living would appeal to him; he had originally practiced in New York until his wife decided that big city life was too hectic for him - a surgeon's schedule was never the most relaxing. But after half a decade of treating a disproportionate amount of violent cases since his arrival, he couldn't help but wonder whether there was something in the water. Serial murders, car accidents, violent shootings. His newest patient, a young woman in her late twenties, had been brought in by an emergency call, something about a shooting in one of the local bars. He counted five gunshot wounds to her chest, three of them significant.

Any of those three could have killed her, but somehow she survived. Her case was hardly unusual; in medical school, he had studied several cases of people who sustained multiple gunshot wounds and managed to live through them, but the center mass was always a dicey proposition even in the most miraculous of cases. Too many important things - things that were absolutely crucial to a human body - were located there. The bullets could have torn out her heart, punctured her lungs and made her drown in her own blood. They could have ricocheted within her ribcage once they entered the body, could have shattered her spine in the doing - even if she had survived it, she might have had to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair or worse.

And yet...

"Who were the first responders?" he asked, face still obscured by his surgical mask as he slipped into the task of suturing the wounds, his hands steady and precise.

"The usual suspects, doc," his surgical technician replied. "Oakes and Sutton."

"Those two again?" Doctor Hayworth wondered, though he didn't look up from his stitching.

"I guess with that much practice, with the rate they're going, they can probably perform miracles at this point."

And judging by the results of this latest operation, they just might have.