The Brand Ch. 14

Melody paused. Victria watched as she shut her eyes tight and twist her head slowly, watched a rumbling quake of remembering shake her body and send the tub's water rippling. Seconds later, Melody opened her eyes and gasped.

"He told us we could go." She cried softly, still looking away, "I watched him make his way up the hallway. It was the boy from the library, in the high school, where I was assigned before they sent me to elementary: Randy, Randy Allwine. I didn't recognize him at first, tall, skinny, too skinny, short black hair. Then, I started to realize, I, I just stood there while Mrs. Peterson slammed the door and locked it, her hands shaking like crazy."

Victria watched as Melody gasped for more breath. It was if the breath she needed to say the words she needed to say was being forced in and out of her lungs by something other than herself.

"I just stood there while Mrs. Peterson whispered to the kids to go and hide inside the closet. Leanne, Leanne ran to me. She was hugging my leg. I just stood there. There were noises, loud, fast noises out in the hall. I felt myself being pulled. It was Mrs. Peterson pulling Leanne off of me, trying to drag her to the closet. I watched Randy through the glass in the door, a big gun in his hands, crossing from room to room, and kids running around behind him. He was close enough for me to see that big black mole on his right cheek. I remembered, he couldn't learn to read. He called me a dike, once, when I was with Dory. He said he was sorry. He said he was sorry."

Victria felt the cold getting colder. She thought to glance over her shoulder again, but changed her mind. Not a word in three months, she thought, considering the sad absurdity of Melody's revelation, and now I get this? Melody's body, seeming as comfortable as she could manage, seemed wholly incongruent to the fear in her eyes and the desperation in her voice.

"Then, then he came to the door. He shot through the glass. Everyone screamed. I just stood there. I couldn't move. Bullets flew by me, by my left side, then by my right. I watched his hand reach through the glass, watched him come into the room. I watched him. I heard Mrs. Peterson tell him to leave, that there were no kids in the classroom. She told him to stop what he was doing and leave. He shot her three times. I jumped. I turned to see her fall, blood, so much blood, oozing, spilling from her stomach, from between her fingers, as she dropped down to the story time rug. Randy, belts of bullets thrown over his shoulders, went to the closet and opened the door. The kids didn't scream. They cried. They whimpered."

Victria was with Melody, as close as she could get to her lover's memories, seeing it all vividly unfold in her own mind. Do I want this, she thought. Do I need this?

"Randy told them to run. They ran, all but one, a little boy, Daniel, Daniel Jacobs. Randy shot him, in his chest. I jumped again. I started to cry. I just stood there. Randy turned to me. His face was angry and afraid all at once. I looked into his wide, Now that I've started doing this, I'm not stopping until I'm finished, eyes.

He looked away. He told me to run. I didn't. He screamed at me to run. I ran. I saw Leanne. I saw Mrs. Peterson's kids running past her. I ran. Leanne started to run too. Then it seemed like everyone was running, until they were falling around me, bullets whizzing past, flying into children, pushing them a few steps further until they dropped."

Gradually, Melody's voice became more relaxed, as if there was no longer any use in resisting. The memories would be Victria's too now. But, after her tale was over, would it be enough?

"Then it was my turn to get shot. It was like time had slowed itself down, slowed me down so that I could feel the bullet's burning in my leg. Down I fell, slipping on someone's blood, sliding, bodies sliding on top of mine. My head on the floor, I stared, sideways, looking through running legs, watching a little girl fall down, the side of her head against the floor, her surprised, lifeless eyes staring back at me. It was Leanne. I thought she'd gotten ahead of me. I stared into her big, confused, brown eyes, precious little Leanne, my little fire cracker. I taught her to talk. I taught her to read. She, she was going to be anything she could dream to be."

Victria raised her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around herself to find some relief from the inconceivable cold in the room. She wept anew, her hot tears doomed to the same chill that began to wrack her body.

"I couldn't move." Melody went on, her words growing more distant, "I couldn't stop crying. It was like my brain was telling me to wash this picture away. Never remember this. But the sounds, the screaming, the crying, the smells of blood, of the perfume of the woman on top of me, the bodies on top of me. Leanne never went away. I couldn't stop seeing her, not until I saw two legs step into my view, blocking her. I realized, while someone's blood slowly dripped onto my temple, that they were Randy's legs. There were Randy's dirty black Nike sneakers."

Let her finish this, Victria thought. Let her go. This has to be how it'll end for her. Let her go.

"I stopped crying. I stopped breathing. He was looking for me, I thought. He would find me, pull me up from these bodies, stand me up and shoot me in the stomach just like he did Mrs. Peterson. And I felt ashamed. I felt selfish, not to just stand up for myself and let him shoot me while he was still shooting. There were two bodies, people, next to me, shaking in fear with each blast. I heard the glass window of the display case at the end of the hall shatter and crash to the floor. Then there was quiet, everyone to afraid to cry, to breathe. The someone that was on me, I felt her blood dripping nearer to my eyes. I saw Randy's black, dirty sneakers, still standing there."

Melody paused. Her breathing had become shallow, the wetness of her tears had frosted. There was ice in her hair. The water along the back side of the cast iron tub had begun to ice up. Melody took a deep, shuddering breath, and then continued.

"Then I heard one last shot, and saw Randy's legs fall forward, to his knees and then onto his face. His black Nikes turned blacker still, the red swoosh turning black, the blood in my eyes making me squeeze them shut tight, stinging, shut tight snap shots, every picture burned in my memory, so chard black that I'll never ever forget. I can't give them back and you can't take them. You can't, let them go for me. "

Melody's voice faded into silence. As suddenly as she'd joined Victria in the world, in that strange cold place between worlds, she withdrew back into herself, into her purgatorial oblivion. Victria, perfectly astonished, felt as black as her silhouetted body, her will stagnating, her entire face as vacant as Melody's eyes. There, unmoving and helpless, they remained for a long time. If Victria had the will, she could move. But, what could she do? Where could she go from there? Still shivering, she looked over her shoulder and watched the shadow man, what her heart told her was the spirit of her father, collapse and disperse into all the dark recesses along the floor and in the gaps in the cabin's walls.

Slowly, she reached for Melody's diary and it's key. She unlocked the diary and then set the key aside. Flipping through the pages, somehow, she wasn't at all surprised at what she saw. Dozens and dozens of snap shots of who she knew to be Leanne, pictures of Bear Lake Elementary School, news clippings of an infamous event that had occurred there and yearbook photo cut outs of Melody and Randy Allwine. The next section of the diary began with one entry, dated December 21st, 2013. The page after that had been carefully ripped out. After that, the remaining pages were blank.

The entry read: Dear God, I didn't think this would ever be possible again, but I've fallen in love. I've fallen in love with a warrior queen. And in that love, she gives me such beautiful pain, pain that obscures my past enough that I believe I will survive it. She is such a bad girl, she must be one of your favorites. Sometimes I just can't believe she's real. Thank you for making her and leading me to her. I feel a poem in my heart. I just can't believe it. I feel it. I will write it and I will give it to her, to my champion: Victria Charpentier.

Victria closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again, and then turned to regard her revolver. As she reached for it, the room's temperature had returned to its former tepid climate. The gun, its blued steel, was cold, pleasantly cold, in her hand.

"That's it." She said, turning to look back at Melody, her glazed eyes, slack jaw, wet skin and thawed hair, "I'm done. I'm so done."