Whispered Beginnings

Torrid

  Airicka Phoenix

  I am dying. The realization is searing like the tip of a red-hot poker burrowing its way deep into my flesh. I bite back a whimper. It’s been so long since sound has left me.

  Above me, clouds bleed a hundred shades of grays and blacks. They cry for me, pricking my flesh with thousands of tears, each sharper than the last. It’s nature’s way of cleansing the crimson river flowing freely from the open cavern in my side. I have long since relinquished all desires to live, thus make no effort to stifle the loss of my life as it pools beneath me and escapes away with the rain in tendrils.

  “Hang on!” someone shouts over the storm, over my frightened heart, my ragged breathing, my tumultuous thoughts and shattering soul.

  Hands, so gentle, so warm grapple with my crumpled body, tearing at my clothes, pulling away the hindrance to find my injuries.

  If they see the wrong that I am, if they see the evil harboring inside me, the fear is not there, and I don’t understand it. Evil as potent as mine should light up like a beacon, warning the innocent away, but maybe that’s what calls them, too. I am an infection and I am infecting those who are trying so desperately to save me.

  Don’t save me! I plead without words. Don’t put me back together.

  “You’re going to be okay!” Someone mistakes the injured animal sound housing in my throat for a cry of help. The need for my existence radiates through every word. “I promise! I won’t let—”

  No! Let me die! I want to scream.

  Chaos flashes, faster-and-faster. Voices climb over nature’s wails, the ground trembles. Face-after-face presses in all around me. Men and women in bright clothes and brighter eyes, all watching me, touching me, speaking to me, but I close my eyes. Maybe they will think me gone and leave, give up their attempts.

  I am lifted, my bones rattle, my side is licked by a thousand fiery tongues of hell, and I swallow my scream for mercy.

  Then, silence. There is peace and warmth. There is the smell of clean things, of spring. I don’t open my eyes, although I want to. I want to see if my life is behind me. If it’s over. If I’m finally free.

  I surface to the soft kiss of twilight, an ocean of shimmering silk and decadent clouds. Fire leaps in iron grates at the foot of the bed, painting light across an unfamiliar room.

  And the ground is torn from beneath me. I am a porcelain doll tumbling head-over-feet from a cliff and bursting against the rocks below, powerless to protect myself against the realization as the waves greedily lap at my broken body.

  They have saved me. I am alive. How could they be so cruel?

  The door opens and a small, round face appears in the crack.

  It’s a girl, big boned with a head full of corkscrew curls the color of sunshine and eyes soft and blue as cornflowers. She smiles. It’s beautiful, warm and sweet, so unlike any gift I have ever received. I don’t know what to do.

  She walks into the room, her steps slow, cautious. Had they warned her about me? Was she here to tell me they’d made a mistake bringing me back?

  “Hello.” She’s still smiling. “I’m Amica. You’re safe.”

  I’m not safe anywhere. Soon, they’ll call him and he’ll come to get me. He will be so displeased that I lost his case of beer, that I hadn’t been back in time to finish supper. The hospital bill would doubtlessly fuel his rage, not to mention having to replace my dress, the only good one I had left.

  “Stupid girl, do you think I’m made of money? Thanks to you, we have to move again. That costs money too you know! If it wasn’t for those monthly cheques, I’d put you on the corner where you belong!”

  No. Beck wouldn’t spend a penny if it wasn’t going on beer. I will no doubt have to dip into the emergency can I kept hidden in a loose panel in the closet to replace the case I lost or it’ll be my head.

  “Does it hurt?” Amica is watching me, face concentrated with concern. I must have taken too long to answer her.

  “Yes.”

  Everything hurts. I grope beneath the sheets to my side, expecting my hand to sink into the hole left there by a man with wild, glassy eyes and a butcher knife. My fingers work under the new, clean gown I wear to the tight gauze protecting itchy stitches. It stings.

  Amica smiles, teeth and all. “Oh, you can talk! We weren’t sure since you were so quiet the whole time.”

  Good girls don’t make a sound. Only devil-children protested against the punishment they deserved. How did Amica not know this?

  “Where am I?” I ask.

  I don’t recognize my surroundings. It can’t be a hospital, because I know them all. I practically grew up being stitched and wrapped by doctors with somber faces, tired hands and rehearsed speeches about clumsy girls hurting themselves. If they saw my injuries for what they were, no one ever cared.

  “You’re safe,” Amica says again. “What’s your name?”

  Useless. No. That’s what he calls me. My mother, before she ran away, had given me a name; the social worker who came to the trailer sometimes used it. What was it?

  “Sofie.” I think.

  Her smile is radiant, so dazzling I am warmed by it like no fire could ever warm me.

  “Sofie.”

  Amica isn’t the one who murmurs my name tenderly. There is someone else walking into the room.

  A boy on the cusp of manhood, steps lightly into the room, hands lost in the mouths of his pockets. He’s dressed the way I’ve seen the private school kids dress, in black slacks and a white dress shirt. I rarely go to school, at least none so fancy you’d need a uniform. The firelight kisses the corn silk strands swept back from a prominent brow. The warm glow illuminates the sea-foam pools set against his angular face. He is beautiful and I forget I need air as he advances.

  Breathe, I tell my forgetful lungs.

  My flushed body absorbs the heat from the fire. I am sweltering from his attention. I drag the sheets higher to my chin, crushing the silk carelessly. I don’t speak to boys often, not if I can help it, and I don’t know where to start. So I say nothing.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  Like I want to burrow under the landscape of silk and vanish.

  “It hurts,” I whisper.

  He doesn’t need any clarification. He nods. “You’ve been asleep for two weeks. The doctor who examined you said you were badly malnourished and dehydrated aside from the knife wound. You have some bones which haven’t set properly after being broken and—”

  “Where am I?” I interrupt, not needing a reminder of my own injuries.

  “Somewhere safe.”

  There is no such place. I know this.

  “I’m Zander,” he says. “I’m the one who found you.”

  I try to bring to mind the images of that night. The pain. The faces, all blurred and distorted, but I recognize him. His is the face etched deep in the recess of my dreams. The one I subconsciously distinguish as the angel who held my hand through the pain, fed me warm, rich things from a bowl and soothed the fire from my brow with a damp cloth. He is my hero.

  “You were pretty out of it,” he justifies my silence. “But I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “Why did you do it?” I ask.

  He looks surprised, and I can’t blame him. Who questions being saved?

  “Would you like to go for a walk?”

  What does that mean? Is he going to take me to a room where a social worker’s waiting? I have no excuse for being out so late. Beck would never admit that he’d sent me out to get beer. He’ll tell them I snuck out to meet some boy. They’ll believe him. They always do.

  A wheelchair is brought next the bed. Amica helps me climb gingerly into it. I place my feet on the footrests. Zander takes the handlebars, thanks Amica and leaves the room with me.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  “A little,” I confess timidly.

  His chuckle sends a warm shiver through me. “I’m surprised. You usually have your head down when we cross paths. I??
?ve always noticed you, which probably sounds really creepy right now.”

  I wait for the bubble of revulsion to brew in the pit of my stomach the way it did when Beck’s friends came over to play poker, but spent the night watching me, touching me when I passed by, their fingers clammy and their breaths rotting of stale beer and cigars. But that’s not the river of warmed honey that flows through me now. The rising heat within me isn’t screaming with anger. It’s soft, pleasant. I think I’m smiling. I touch my lips. Yes. Definitely smiling.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask.

  We’re going down endless corridors, each lined with oil paintings, worn rugs, and polished wood. Expensive.

  “I live here,” he says, stopping in front of an elevator. He pushes the down button, “with my uncle, but he’s away on business a lot.”

  The lift doors open. We slip inside. He pushes down and the doors close.

  Seconds later, the elevator stops. The doors open and he rolls me out into a magnificent, marble foyer. He pushes me through a set of double doors; unleashing a flurry of heavenly fragrances, each so powerful I’m sure I can touch them. Night sparkles around us, kept gently at bay by garden lamps hidden in bushes, trees and floating in a rippling pond. That’s where he stops, next to a granite bench. We sit facing each other. Silence caresses the air. Fireflies float over the lily pads bobbing in the water. Crickets chirp. The wind rustles through the trees. Everything is singing with magic, and I am a child again, holding it all to my innocent heart like my first taste of candy.

  “You don’t have to go back,” Zander speaks so softly, I almost mistake him for the pleading voice in my head.

  “I can’t stay here.” But I want to. Right here. Near this bench and pond. Forever.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know you.” It’s such a lie. I know him. My very soul knows him. He is the same person who brought me in from the rain, stayed with me, healed me and is now offering to save my life… again. I back paddle “My father—”

  “Will never touch you here!” The vow drips venom from his curled lips.

  I look at him, really look at him and I see what he’s offering me burning behind his eyes—freedom, a way away from Beck, from the abuse, the nights without food, heat, comfort. He was offering me life for the second time.

  Freedom. Absolute freedom. I want to cry. I want to believe.

  “What do you want?” Everyone wants something.

  He straightens slightly, his eyes pools of liquid fire searing through me. “I want you not to walk down the street with marks on your face. I want you not to look petrified when someone bumps into you. I want… I need you to smile. I want you to be happy, Sofie.”

  No. There has to be something else. Something he’s not saying.

  “What’s in it for you?”

  He holds my gaze, unwavering. “I get to see you live.”

  Bland, uncaring faces of teachers, social workers, doctors, neighbors… my mother, shatter, splintering the darkness imprisoning my soul, and I am radiant. I am a meadow of wildflowers under a canopy of endless blue. I am the wind.

  I am Sofie.