I smiled. He was finally accepting death. Now, he had the ability to save Ethel. I felt the air beside me shift. I knew without looking Arun disappeared, using the atmosphere to escape this room.
James turned and walked to the door. He stopping moving just shy of turning the doorknob. “You are just like everyone else. You use me for whatever purpose suits you. I let myself think you would be different. I let myself think you would tell me the truth why I can’t see your death. Instead, you stole my blood for your own benefit. The minute your Death Flames are off me, I will kill you with my own hands.”
He turned the doorknob. “James, wait, you can’t leave.”
Just like earlier, he moved quick. He stood in front of me before I could blink an eye. “Why?”
I looked around the room and found a metal water pitcher. “Remember what I told you earlier. Find your hiding spot, and lock death behind a door. When you do that, your normal appearance will return. You can’t go out in public like you are. People will think you are the real Grim Reaper.”
I held my breath as I lifted the metal pitcher in front of James so he could get a real look at his new reflection.
Chapter Seven
James
She’d turned me into a monster. I stared at my reflection in the pitcher willing it to be the curves of the smudged metal distorting my face. Reaching up, there was no doubt that the reflection staring back at me was my own. My jaw had become more pronounced and even the inside of my mouth felt different. I ran my tongue along my teeth and stopped at the sharp canine it landed on. Pulling my lips open in the shape of an ‘O,’ I managed to verify what I already knew. I was changed. I was a creature not of this world. I hated myself. I hated her.
I wanted to choke the life out of her. I wanted to destroy her for whatever she’d done. I’d spent my entire life as a freak. The last thing I needed was to look like one too. But she was right about one thing, there was no way I could return to the club looking half man, half canine skeleton.
“James, listen to me. You can go back. Find your hiding spot.”
The last person I’d listen to was Violet. She’d done this to me. I needed out of there and fast. I thought of the Death Flames and turned away from her.
“Leave me alone!” I growled, glad her disappearing ex had made himself scarce. The last thing I needed was an audience.
Closing my eyes and ignoring Violet’s hand on my shoulder, I tried to find the hiding spot. But even that was impossible to ignore. There was something familiar about her. She reminded me too much of Jenn. On the surface level, they were so different. But once you peeled Violet’s make-up and fucked up animal besties off, they were really very much the same. It didn’t matter. She’d turned me into a monster the same way Jenn had made me a killer. I needed to go back if only to escape them.
Death. Accept it.
Find it.
Embrace it.
Go back.
Almost two years to the very day I’d met Jenn, I sat on the pier a hundred feet away from the spot Jane had grabbed her chest and collapsed. I wished Eric was still there. But living with the guilt of what he’d done had been too much for him. He’d been gone a year now. I imagined him in heaven, hurling Frisbees at angels, and tried not to laugh. Now was not a laughing moment. I watched her, half cursing her very existence and partly wanting to run to her to tell her it would be okay. But I was frozen. It was my fault too. If I was honest, I knew that Jenn didn’t have the capacity to remember to take her daily pills. It wasn’t all her fault that the birth control hadn’t worked out. Like she’d reminded me, it took “two to tango.” Her and her Goddamned clichés.
There was part of me that thought it might not be that bad. I sat there, watching her kick up sand, trying not to think about what she’d said. She’d had a point. More like many of them. I wasn’t exactly humble and I did lack virtue. And now, with our dilemma growing in her womb, that was more clear than ever. I could do the right thing, of course, and marry her. But it wasn’t like it would change much or that either of us had ever cared about convention. I wouldn’t leave her. That much I knew. I just dreaded the idea of shouldering the responsibility of another Jenn.
There were times when it didn’t feel like that—more than not—on the days when she managed to freeze moments and drag me to a park. At the picnics. On the walks. Those times I could get her to focus on the little things I cared about. Jenn was a great listener. I was not. She’d stand in the kitchen whipping up my favorite chicken parmesan, listening to me ramble about the assholes at whatever job I could pick up. When I was done, she’d look at me smiling and tell me I was a good man. I never understood exactly what she meant by that. Only that she said civility and just being there were all she’d ever wanted. And when she told me about the pregnancy, she informed me I’d be a good dad. I wasn’t so sure. Jenn didn’t exactly have high expectations. She knew nothing of the flask in my desk or the joints I sucked down on my way home, just to put a smile on my face for her. She was just a better person than me. It was that simple. For that reason, I never told her anything about my curse.
But she wasn’t always easy. She’d called me every name in the book, flailing her arms around like a six year old who’d had her toys taken away at school, going so far as to kick the pier and stub her toe. Red-faced and still telling me where to go, she’d taken off down the beach. I’d learned to let her go. She’d come back when she’d blown off steam. I understood the need.
Jenn could never see the shades of gray. In her world, things were only black or white. She told me if she killed her child—our child—she’d never be able to live with herself or me. She said she’d rather take off with the kid and never see me again. For her, there were no options and she didn’t think we had a “stupid dilemma” at all. “The only dilemma we have is you!” she’d screamed, balling her hands into fists, spit flying out the corners of her lips. It was almost like a preview of what was to come in the child she was carrying. I needed to get stoned.
Jenn wasn’t the kind of soul that could live with taking a life. But there was always adoption and Jenn wasn’t hearing of it. She was hard on herself, but me more. She hated me for what I hoped she would do. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. I knew her well enough to know we’d have different ideas about bringing another person into our home. Puppies were one thing, but a kid? I just couldn’t see it.
Faster, she ran across the length of the very beach where she’d spent her last day with Jane. Not much had changed, and yet, everything was different. I considered calling Abbie, a friend she liked to escape to when she needed to get away from me, but decided better of it. I didn’t need a lecture right now from Jenn’s best and only friend about my girlfriend’s need for structure and how I was being insensitive. I sighed, ignoring Jenn telling me she was done with me and we were over and finally standing and turning around. I figured if I walked to the car and sat there—maybe even got in a few hits—Jenn would think I was leaving and finally come back. She had a way of appearing out of nowhere just when she thought she might lose me.
Back home and after sleep, things might feel different. She always did better with rest and she hadn’t slept since the night before when she’d broken the news with the drippy First Response stick in her hand. Since, she’d been up seething and plotting my “only-just” death. Neither of us knew, of course, that she was only hours away from hers. Why the hell didn’t I know?