The Brand Ch. 01

"You didn't happen to maybe leave any medications behind at the shelter, did you?"

Melody glanced quickly behind her. Victria caught the rapid eruption of anguished contempt that crossed the woman's face before she wagged a brief "no" and hurried around the next end cap. As to how many more nerves there were to touch, Victria couldn't tell. But, a series of doctor visits would help to clarify, as long as Melody made the appointments and answered honestly. As for any psychological evaluation, Victria would put that off. Since that seemed to be the touchy area, she'd give Melody the chance to unravel the painful truthes of her past on her own terms.

Victria rounded the corner and saw Melody scanning the offerings in the yogurt section. She looked healthy enough; pink cheeks, clear complexion, decent teeth, good looking nails and lustrous hair, but what about the inside of her head or even her heart? Two years being homeless, trying to scrape up money or food or a safe place to sleep every night, couldn't have been that liberating or stress free. Victria thought of Melody's trash can bully and wondered how many other trials had come before her. The woman had yet to talk about the home she lived in before her homelessness began.

Time was what Victria knew she needed. She could give her that; time enough to work it out or time enough to collect enough money and experience to take off and keep her secrets safely hidden. Victria had seen it all before. Melody wasn't the first and she wouldn't be the last. The silence between them continued for a few more aisles. Then Melody, in the midst of transferring no fewer than ten cartons of ice cream into their cart, smiled hopefully at Victria's cool astonishment, and then flat out howled with laughter as the junior executive added another six boxes of chocolate éclairs to the already mountainous pile.

By the time they'd arrived at the rightmost of the two registers, Melody had returned to the level of contentment she'd walked in with. She happily transferred their items to the conveyer, and Victria couldn't help chuckling along with her as they watched their little old lady cashier reach under the register and pull out a pair of mittens. Then, just as Victria was about to tug a credit card from the inside pocket of her blazer, two black clad men, their faces obscured with women's black nylon stockings, burst into the store and ran to each of the cashiers.

"Don't nobody move." Demanded the taller one, the one that had their cashier; growling his directive through a Spanish accent, "Just open the registers and give us the money; nice and easy."

Victria glanced at his partner; shorter, darker skinned, black, maybe Dominican. She quickly took in his gun, and then glanced the one in the taller man's right hand; wondering if it was fake too.

"Do your mothers know you're robbing a supermarket?" asked Victria.

The shot rang out immediately then. Victria was surprised that she could still hear the ejected shell bouncing on the store's floor. She didn't flinch as she turned to see that Melody didn't appear to be behind her.

"Does your momma know you one dumb mother fuckin bitch!?! Shouted the big man with the real gun, which Victria turned back around to see was pointed at her, "Lay down bitch! All of you; lay down!"

But Victria didn't lay down. She wouldn't lay down. The man fired another shot above Victria's head. Again, she didn't flinch. She was aware though, of a soft keening on the floor behind her.

"You crazy fuckin bitch! Lay the fuck down, I said!"

Now she was getting angry.

"Fuck you." She said; her tone imperturbably patient.

Even through his pantyhose mask, she could tell that the man's eyes had gone wide, their whites a dirty yellow under the black weave of the stocking. In that instant, both registers were open, and each man threw their hostages to the floor, and then scooped up all the bills, flung the trays from the drawer and pulled out the other bills hidden there. Seconds later, they were gone.

It was only then that a rage filled Victria's head; the sound like FM static, as she turned around to see that the fifteen or so other customers had begun to get back up on their feet. Near as she could tell, the two shots hadn't hit anyone. Drawing a deep breath, she ran behind the counter and checked the old woman. Her pulse was rapid, but not shallow, and there was a swelling bruise on the side of her head. The other cashier, older, but not as old as the other woman, had slowly stepped to the door, opened it, looked around outside and came back in. She then immediately went to the phone at the customer service desk. As Victria listened to the cashier describing what had transpired to 9 1 1, the store manager, a red head in his late forties, came to help tend to the little woman's wound. Victria got back to her feet, and went around the counter to check on Melody. She found her behind their cart, huddled prostrate on the floor, her arms wrapped around her head. Thankfully, she didn't see any blood; but she now recognized the source of the high keening sound she'd heard after the first shot was fired. It was Melody, crying pitifully, breathing snot sputtering breaths from her nose, a wide puddle of urine spread beneath her.

In the hour that followed, Melody was inconsolable. First, she refused to get up. Then, she refused to talk to the police. When she refused to leave with Victria, the seemingly too cool for her own good young lady went about paying for her purchases, bagged them, and then loaded them into the car; stating her concern that the ice cream would melt if she didn't get it home. So Victria drove them home, put the sixteen boxes of ice cream in the freezer, left the rest of the food on the counters, and then drove back to the store.

She walked back into the market, and saw that Melody still hadn't moved. Two men stood on either side of her; a paramedic and a police officer. Victria gave her statement, and the officer disapproved of her brazen stupidity. Dismissing him, she excused herself, and then; with seeming effortlessness, hoisted a piss soaked, dead weight, glassy eyed Melody over her shoulder, and carried her out of the store. Once back at the house, Victria stepped to the passenger side of the Lexus, unbuckled a limp and dazed Melody from the seat, hoisted her back onto her shoulder, and then carried her into the house.

Victria knew, as she carefully laid Melody on the kitchen floor, that there were so many things she could tell her about taking risks, about failure and fear, and love, and death. But she didn't. As she went about putting away all the groceries, she understood why she'd egged the man on. They were masked, security cameras or not, they wouldn't be identified, but a spent shell could be connected to someone's gun, maybe the tall, yellow eyed man's gun. But, there was no point in Victria's wasting her breath, telling Melody that.

There was no point in dragging her up the stairs, stripping her and throwing her into the shower, as angry as Melody had made her. That wasn't the way to play it. Two nerves in one night, thought Victria, was apparently too much for Cowboy to handle. She gave Melody, prostrate, indolent and still glassy eyed , one last look before shutting off the kitchen light and heading up the stairs.

The doors and windows locked, the alarm set, Victria got into bed and picked up the copy of One Hundred Years Of Solitude she'd been trying to get through. Bored once again with its cleverly contrived absurdity, Victria set it aside for one of the installments of the Gor series. The reading kept her up for a few more hours. Then, as the words on page 214 blurred between her closing lashes, Victria marked her page, tossed the book aside and switched off her bedside lamp.

Listening to the silence of the house, she thought of Melody's staggering green eyes and the undefinable pain behind them. Presently, her heart calm, her mind settled by the knowledge that she challenged fate and would live another day, she drifted off into sleep.

Meanwhile, Melody, her head throbbing, her body aching from being in the same position for hours, stared unblinkingly across the kitchen's hardwood floor. Victria had left the hall light on, and Melody watched the polyurethaned strips of gleaming wood alter into the ripples of a calm moonlit sea. Then suddenly, with the effort of one who has struggled to stay awake night after night because slumber brought more pain than it did good, Melody made the effort to move before the inertia of sleep could draw her into the charnel maw of nightmare.

Slowly, she reached her hand across the floor before her, trusting the cool solid reality of the smooth wood. A safe recollection had risen to the surface of Melody's working memory. She had read a book on lucid dreaming once, and Night after night, over the summer between seventh and eighth grade, she'd tried to train her mind not to dream. But, her mind still constructed dreams for her, in spite of her efforts. She wanted life to reveal itself in its own due time. She wanted no premonition's, bad omens or waking up early in the morning feeling puzzled and essentially violated by a chain of images and dialogues she didn't choose for herself.

Even after she'd learned that the brain requires the dream state for the regulation of its own sanity, Melody felt betrayed by her mind, for its sheer disregard for her intentions and ruminations and resented it for its control over her. Then she'd read some Eastern philosophy, and it was reinforced for her that nearly all people were controlled by their minds, and that it took great discipline to take back control from it. So she lived life, and studied, and worked, and meditated until she no longer had dreams she could remember.

Yet, when she needed it, there had been no book detailing the methods of how to lucidly change nightmares back to innocuous dreams. And memories can suddenly lose their harmlessness just as reality can turn, in a split second, from a perfectly enjoyable, benign, string of experiences to such an explosive event that it radiates deafening echoes of itself

Until no dream is safe and nightmares are inevitable.

Certain she was still awake; Melody shut her eyes tight and clenched her teeth, bracing herself against her corrupted memory. By the sheer force of will, Melody got up onto her hands and knees. She was cold now; the dampness of her piss saturated jeans chilling her skin. Slowly she crawled, feeling better about opening her eyes again, and focused her vision on the splashes of light in the wood flooring until she crossed the hallway and arrived at the foot of the stairs. Still on her knees, Melody limply crawled up each step, reaching her right hand up to support herself with the bannister. Once at the top of the stairs, she got to her feet and crossed into the guest bath.

Victria, normally a very sound sleeper, was roused by some subtle resonance. It seemed to be coming from the wall behind the headboard. Then the night's events came rushing back to the front of her mind. A moment more and she was totally awake. Victria lay there for a time, not moving, her eyes still closed. Presently, she turned on her lamp, crept out of bed, and then stumbled into the master bath.

When she came out again, Victria saw Melody standing in her doorway, illuminated by the lamp's light, wearing the long pink night shirt she'd left on the coverlet of the guest room bed. She'd obviously showered, her hair looking damp, the fresh perfume of soap filling the room. Their eyes met, but Melody didn't keep her gaze for long. Victria studied her, reflected on her behavior during each event of the day, and came to a decision.

"If you've come in here to seek comfort in my bed," Victria announced in a soft measured tone, "Then you must kneel at my feet and beg me for the privilege."

Melody glanced briefly at Victria, and then looked down at her own clasped hands. Eventually, as she raised her interlocked fingers and lowered her chin to them, Victria saw Melody's lips quiver and watched fresh tears welling in the corners of her eyes. An instant later, she watched Melody step forward, round the side of the bed, and then drop to her knees.

"Please Ma'am," uttered Melody as she began to sob anew, "May I sleep in your bed tonight?"

Victria savored the moment, the sight of her there; pathetic, lost, afraid and in despair. She found her perfectly beautiful; captivating in her sorrow.

"Yes girl," Victria answered finally, "You may find comfort in my bed. You may have the left side."

Melody quickly rose to her feet, slipped passed her tough yet benevolent hostess, and crawled under the covers. Victria made her way around the foot of the bed, crawled in onto her side, and switched off the lamp. She listened to Melody sniffle in the darkness, and turned to reach for her. There was no hesitation. Melody snuggled in close, cozying into the spoon of Victria's body.

After a time, Victria leaned on one elbow and began to gently stroke Melody's hair. The act, intended to sooth, seemed to trigger a greater fit of crying. Melody blubbered and shuddered before finally turning around and burying her face against Victria's chest, warming the woman's breasts with her hot tears. They remained that way through the night and into the early morning; one embracing the other, Melody softly weeping as Victria held her close, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head, not a word spoken between them.