The Brand Ch. 14

"Vic!"

"I promise."

With that, Victria ended the call and pocketed her phone. Turning on her heel, she walked back to the Ford, to Melody's side. She opened the door and took her lover in for a moment. Melody was radiant: her hair bound up in a towering, coiled, abundance, festooned with silk flowers; and in her dress, a used prom gown Victria had purchased in a Harrisburg consignment shop. The gown was a regal affair, with a plunging scoop bodice, strips of gold sequins along its length and down the arms, its two net under skirts delimited by a flowing over skirt of gold silk organza.

Carefully, Victria lifted her out of the Explorer, and then kicked its door closed. As she carried her anxiety stunned lover toward the barbed wire and wood fence, she felt her phone vibrating over and over again. Setting Melody down behind the fence, facing her forward and after carefully leaning her against the barbed wood, Victria finally withdrew her phone again and shut it down.

Making sure that Melody wouldn't topple into the crowd of dirty grey sheep milling around her legs for what she hoped wouldn't be for at least eight or so minutes, Victria sprinted back to the Explorer. Once inside, she turned the ignition, and then maneuvered the vehicle into a position that worked for her. Then, grabbing her camera from the duffle, Victria sped out of the Explorer, and then climbed onto its roof. From there, she focused her camera on the vast, milling, sheep, keeping Melody, with her hands placed gently on the rail, in the bottom center of the frame.

Victria snapped as many shots as she could before her model succumbed to her own catatonic inertia. What she recorded was a sequence of postures, expressions: penetrating straight on, distant, sad, melancholy, self-actualized, pensive, day dreamy and casually omnipotent until her detached goddess started to appear as if she was verging on falling backward into the sheep grazing behind her. Victria scrambled from the Explorer's roof, catapulted herself from its hood, and then sprinted to Melody. Catching her in time, frightening perhaps thirty or more sheep into a short-lived stampede, Victria gathered up her love once more and lifted her back over the fence. As she held Melody close, Victria breathed in deeply of her temple, and then graced a line of soft kisses across her forehead. Presently, Victria turned around to give the sprawling multitude of sheep one last doleful look before returning Melody to her seat, strapping her in, and then driving the rest of the way along I59 south, toward Birmingham.

2

Victria had driven into central time. The dawn of the following day would not fill the sky with its purple grey for another five or so hours. Miles before, She'd set her wrist watch back an hour, but she hadn't felt out of sync, not until she'd found herself in Louisiana, parked before a place she hadn't thought about for a very long time. Victria rolled down their windows an inch or two, allowing the moist air coming off the river, and its fêted smell, to touch her skin and beckon her closer. It was the old grey house, its black gaping hole above the second story and the words written below it, faded phantoms of themselves though still looming hauntingly in their sun and rain beaten yellow: 1 dead in attic.

Karma." Whispered Victria in the darkness, "We cast spells as living, thinking, things, and then the world sends its message back through the actions of others."

She reached for Melody's hand and held it tight for a moment.

"Mel honey?" she said, "There's something I need to find out. I'll be right back."

Victria released Melody's hand and set it back on her lap. Then, withdrawing her key from the ignition, she removed the pen light from the ring, and then stepped out of the Explorer.

Once outside, she locked down the vehicle and pocketed her keys. Slowly, she walked through the overgrown grass of the house's door yard. Pausing, Victria assessed the place's front door. There was none, at least none she could tell might be behind the planks of wood that had been nailed in upon the front entrance.

So there it was: fight or flight, advance another way or retreat? Follow through with another stupid idea, she thought, shining her light across the lower face of the structure, or move on? Let's see. If I climb up the porch's roof, I'd be almost halfway there. Then, if those shingles hold, I can get to that second floor window. After that, it looks a little tricky, but the hole is just right there. You know what? I can do this.

Once Victria reached the lattus work on the right side of the porch, she tucked the light pen into her mouth, gripped it with her teeth, and then began her ascent. It was, as she thought, easy at first. The arms and upper body she'd worked on through her time at Grandmother's made the climb effortless, the lifting of her own body weight no challenge at all.

The stretch between the top of the porch's roof and the targeted second floor window was another matter. Shingles flipped out of her hands or cracked apart under her feet. At some points, all there was to exploit were the nail heads that protruded from the tattered tar paper beneath the old, weathered, shingles. Still, though surprisingly enough, Victria's legs were apparently so strong and the toes of her feet so sensitive that she was able to use them to support her way up the sheer face of the house.

At the window, she shined her light in, but it was far too fogged with dust and muck she couldn't make out a thing. With great care, Victria continued, her grip more tenuous the higher she went. As she crossed over the word "dead" of the message, she could here buoyant jazz echoing to her from the bar district of the French Quarter. Two more shingles flew from her hands. With soar fingers, she held on, rose higher and reached further. Then finally, her left hand reached into the burst hole in the attic and gripped the rough, dry surface of a two by four.

Heaving herself up, Victria reached her other hand over and hung there, her legs loose, her feet dangling. Her jaw, its ache from holding the pen light in her teeth, hurt more than anything else. She withdrew the light from her mouth, and then slowly scanned it across the dark space until she came upon, nothing. She hadn't wished that the ghosts she'd created in her home wouldn't follow there to New Orleans because she wanted to find familiar ghosts, good magic ghosts. Still, Victria crossed the darkness with her light. She'd come so far. There were moldering boxes, dust caked bags of clothes, a tall, free standing, wood framed mirror, and so filthy her light could barely be reflected in it. There was a door, opened part way.

Then there was a corner, and in that corner was a body. Victria shuddered. She trained her light on a pile of forgotten bones, bagged in a faded blue gingham dress, an old woman's skull tilted upon its collar, leather skinned and wisps of white hair clinging to the sharply rounded bones of her cheeks. Astonished and incredulous, but as certain as certain could be, Victria smiled once she'd realized that the corpse's skeletal arm was raised and held up a hand, for perhaps as long as she sat there, but who knew for sure, with her middle finger pointed up in a curse of intrepid defiance. Victria hummed soft laughter and wagged her head before finally working her way back to the ground.

She'd gotten back down safely enough, though she'd jumped the worst of it between the second floor window and the porch roof, which cracked and shuddered under her weight. With one last look of glee, Victria brushed herself off and got back into the Explorer. A short distance more and she came upon the home of Francisca, the self-described Voodoo priestess that had baptized her those nine years ago.

Under the comfortably palpable weight of the night sky, Victria stepped around to Melody's side of the vehicle, and then looked down at the single, remaining, stone lion at the head of Francisca's walkway. She remembered Botchwey's story that the other stone lion, perhaps two hundred pounds or more, had been carried off by Catrina. Victria opened the passenger door, cradled Melody in her arms and closed the door behind her. Slowly, like a groom, she carried her golden bride along the walkway to the permanent temporary shelter. Victria saw that there were no longer any chickens nor were there any of their nests along either side of the porch.

Arriving at the door, Victria dropped Melody's lower half, and then proceeded to knock. Presently, her knocking turned into banging. Victria called Botchwey's name before finally pulling open the screen door, and then finding the next door unlocked. Once she'd carried Melody in, Victria shined her small light around the space.

It had not changed. There was the kitchen card table and the shallow bowl of water in which sat three candles. Along the far wall beyond the table sat the cooler and the four three gallon jugs of water. However, the room was festooned with cob webs. The water in the bowl on the table had evaporated or had been emptied years ago. The cooler and jugs of water were caked with dust. Victria pulled a chair out, checked its sturdiness and dusted it off a bit before finally seating Melody.

Before heading back to the car to get their things, Victria investigated the rest of the cabin's interior. The mattress and bed roll was still laid out on the living room floor. The armoire still stood on the far wall and most of its objects of worship were still laid out upon it. Trailing her light across its surface, Victria saw that the picture frames were empty and the dolls Francisca had made were gone, though one doll remained.

Victria was motionless as she considered the figure. Presently, she reached and took the doll and held it gently in her hand. Shining her light to it, Victria saw that it was she, her brown hair, her hard eyes, her outfit a formal black dress suit, its skirt stopping at her knees. In her right hand, the doll clutched a tiny paint brush. In the left, she was clutching what seemed very much like a cat of nine. Across her chest was a sash of braided ribbons of red, yellow, white and blue. Below the knees were painted scars and punctured pins that gleamed in the light.

Victria glanced at Melody. Her posture was that of a rag doll, legs splayed beneath her skirt, hands palm up upon her lap, her head tilted severely to the right. Victria wanted to speak to her, to tell her, to say, to describe her confusion, that the ribbons were good charms, the red, the white, the yellow and the blue. But the bad colors, though unique to her, the brown of her hair and her eyes, the black of her suit, the representation of what she'd worked so hard to become, they were not holy colors. So then, had Francisca cursed her or blessed her? Victria closed her eyes, pressed the doll against her bosom, and thought for a moment.

Presently, in the silence of her contemplation, a single question came to her. Whether it was spoken by her own mental voice or uttered by another, Victria wasn't sure, but she was sure of what it asked. What has your anger done for you all these years? There came a sudden rustling in the room. Victria opened her eyes and looked into the darkness. Her eyes fell on Melody, and she realized that it was the sound of her skirt shifting. The sound stopped and there was stillness again.

Victria turned toward where she knew the makeshift bathroom would be. Warily, she advanced until her meager light shown along the side of the claw footed, white enameled, cast iron tub. Drawing close, she assessed its state. I'll have to clean it, she thought. But, one thing at a time.

An hour or more later, after Victria had brought their things into the cabin, bathed the kitchen and living room in the light of thirty candles and swept all the dust and collective cob webs into a pile in the far kitchen corner, she began work on cleaning the tub. Once it was to her satisfaction, she plugged its drain, and then went about undressing Melody. Eventually, Victria carried her lover's limp body to the tub and gently set her inside, letting the back of her neck settle against the rim and then draping her arms along its sides. A quarter hour more and she'd filled the tub with most of the water from the supply in the kitchen.

Victria kneeled then, beside the tub, to soak and shampoo Melody's hair. Set down on the floor boards beside her was the doll she had constructed the night before, her own discovered effigy, Melody's diary, its key and the revolver she'd bought in the Vermont gun shop. Occasionally, she glanced toward the brightly lit living room, hoping, wishing, fearing, and waiting.

"You know Cowboy," said Victria as she lathered Melody's long golden brown hair, "I've been wondering. What if I'm one of those people, those psychos that commit the most horrendous crimes and get away with it, like The Ripper or the Zodiac? I mean, there are probably plenty of people who evaded justice and lived on to a ripe old age."?"

Victria paused to rinse Melody's hair. She lifted her arms and then her head into the water, cradling her neck so that she could effectively wash out all of the shampoo. Once finished, Victria carefully lifted Melody's upper body back out of the water, and then arranged her arms and head back where she'd originally placed them. Then, taking her Melody doll, she crawled to the side of the tub, sat herself crossed legged and reached for the rest of the items she'd brought into the room to put them within reach. That done, Victria looked at Melody in the face and said:

"What if even the most heinous and terrible criminals were categorized in a kind of tiered class status in the all-knowing mind and heart of God. Maybe God needs to keep certain people around you know, keep them free to do their thing because it can't thin the human herd without certain humans to do the weeding out of certain other humans. Is that sick?"

Victria, with her back to the open doorway to the living room, stared wistfully into Melody's blankly gazing eyes. She had no answer to give her domme. After a time, Victria looked away and held her doll out to the side so that she could regard it in the light coming in from the other room.

"Me?" Victria softly intoned as she stared into the doll's green sequin eyes, "I don't think so. I think that's just nature. I know that doesn't justify the rape and murder of women and children for the sake of one's pleasure though. That's sick, deranged."

Victria saw Samantha in her mind's eye then, standing half naked over the cage she'd imprisoned her in, and remembered the look of smug triumph in her face as she let her bladder go over the cage. She watched then as her two friends, their names now forgotten, taking their turns, all of them smiling and laughing, as they squatted over the cage, blessing little Victria with their piss and their shit.

"But that's not me. Right Mel?" she continued, her voice a remnant of itself, her gaze still fixed on the doll's eyes, "God hadn't invented free will and just left us to our own vice devices unless it knew that we'd create ourselves, work ourselves out, orient ourselves toward the direction that was preordained, right? Or, has something else taken over? Is something else at work here?"

Victria closed her eyes once more and listened to the silence. She thought she heard muted strains of street creole jazz playing off in the distance. Gradually, her gaze drifted to the other items on the floor beside her, she set Melody's doll down and took up her own crafted likeness and began to study it in the light coming in from behind her. I'm none of those, she thought. I am a brand of total fuck up all my own. According to this fucking doll right here, I'm a black witch. I have no business trying white magic. Be damned, I have no business trying any magic at all.

Suddenly, Victria became aware of a drop in temperature and a stirring beside her. She swung her head toward the tub to see that Melody's arms had slipped into the water. Victria reached, paused, and then set her hand back down. What if I'm supposed to let her go? What if she's made her own decision, sick of where she is, and sick of what's happened to her? Tears rushed to Victria's eyes. She set the doll down, and covered her mouth to quiet her crying. The room grew colder and colder. Melody's head sank slowly deeper, her chin below the water's surface, her lips, the tip of her nose. Victria stared wide eyed.

"I have absolutely no control over anything or anyone." She cried, "I am not the extension of the divine or the profane. I'm just a fractured spirit, a broken mind, meant to suffer until, until...I lose everything. I promise you. If she goes, I go."

Instinctively, she reached. Sobbing, frigid, she gripped the side of the tub. Its rim burned coldly under her hand. She was trapped, the feeling of wet skin to frosty ice, burning, painful burning. She watched the bridge of Melody's nose go under, watched her staring blank eyes, she too now weeping, descending below the water.

"No, no, no, no!" Victria sobbed, "Please stop! I free her! I free her! Leave her, I beg you!"

Victria watched Melody's final slip below the surface, watched her hair spread and float before her glazed eyes, until fully obscuring them from view. Her face streamed with tears as she groped for her revolver. Resigned, devastated, she turned away and stared with futile, pathetic, defiance at the gun just beyond her fingers. There came a comfort in the cold then. It came as a shadow, a silhouette poised before her, just beyond the open doorway, a black figure, a man, naked, indistinct, chains dangling from his wrists, broad shoulders and narrow hips. Spellbound, heartbroken, offering herself to her madness, Victria said:

"Daddy?"

"Why didn't we die?"

The words, their sound, the voice that uttered them, startled Victria. She whirled her head around. Melody, gleaming wet, her eyes alive and fixed on hers, looked sadly back at her. Victria quickly brought the hem of her shirt up to her face and wiped it clean. She looked again and Melody was still there, a fully living, sweet speaking, divinely beautiful Melody, her arms folded along the rim of the tub, her head rested on her left forearm.

"No one carried me out." Melody continued.

No one carried her out? Is it really her? What is she talking about?

"Melody," whimpered Victria, "I carried you out, remember? You mean that time at the market, right? And then-"

"They made me walk out." Melody interrupted, "Someone lifted me up, and they said: just walk right out of here."

Victria, stunned speechless, set the gun down, and then took up Melody's doll once more. Gently, she stroked its hair, studied Melody's lost but vibrant face and listened.

"Who was that anyway?" said Melody, looking up over Victria's head, "They had no idea, whoever they were. Someone should have had an idea. Someone should have seen it coming. Isn't that what they all say, mighty Victria, my dark empress?"

Melody lowered her eyes again and fixed her gaze on Victria, still seated on the bathroom floor, motionless, her features hidden in the blackness of her silhouette. Victria stared back, taking in Melody's slowly streaming, tragic, helpless tears.

"But yes," Melody went on, "Someone did see it coming. Only, there hadn't been the will to turn back. I, can't give it back. As much as I want to, I can't give it back."

"Melody." Whispered Victria.

"If only you'd been there, you would have wrapped me up in your strong, gentle arms, and I think, I think-"

"My sweet baby," said Victria, sniveling as she inched closer and stopped, feeling a sudden new barrier of cold before her.

""It was our second visit to Mrs. Peterson's first grade class." Melody continued, her eyes fixed on some distant past, "It was time. Leanne was ready to take on the socialization, no more tiny fits of rage, no more biting."