“Yeah. I’m a chicken.” I pressed closer to him. “Nobody ever showed me how to dance, unless, spiritual fire chanting counts.”
He laughed, as I knew he would, reliving the memory with me. My crazy parents.
“You do look awfully cute in that apron,” he observed, looking me up and down.
“Oh. Yeah...” I said looking down and frowning at my definite un-cuteness.
“It’s time, Sherry,” he said abruptly, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’m not waiting any longer. When we go out Monday, you and I are going out alone. To cover more ground,” he said smiling, still holding me close and swaying with the music.
“Really?” I squeaked happily, knowing what this meant.
I bit my bottom lip thinking about the possibility of it. On Monday, I’d be married to the most beautiful creature in the universe.
“Would that be ok?” he asked, always second guessing how I could love him.
“That’d be better than ok!” I said loudly and then lowered my voice. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I’m so ready to Mrs.- uh...how’s that gonna work?”
“Well, I could take your last name since I technically don’t have one.”
“No. Make something up. We’ll start completely new. New name, new everything.”
“Hmmm... How about Finch.”
I laughed out loud at that.
“Finch? Really? That’s what you want? Merrick Finch?” I laughed again, and I realized I threw my head back, just like Mrs. Trudy had done.
Merrick brought out the best in us.
“You don’t like it, huh?” He laughed. “You pick something.”
“Um. What about...Keeperofsky.”
I was just toying with him and he knew it. We both laughed and he squeezed me with a tight hug whispering in my ear.
“Whatever you want, baby, whatever you want.”
I wrapped my arms as much as I could up to his shoulders, barely reaching, so I put them around his waist instead. We stayed there, swaying with the rest of them.
Jeff looked to really be enjoying himself. Phillip stood by the stairs, brooding. He finally decided to join us, huh? As soon as I met his eyes across the room, he barged off, back to his insanely spacious room with all the amenities. He was so strange.
I couldn’t even remember how many songs we danced to when I heard the oven ding. Merrick kisses the palm of my hand quickly before I headed back into the kitchen to finish up.
The huge industrial pans were something. I had trouble lifting them even without the pasta on them. I managed, how I’d never know, to bring the four huge racks of food out of the hot oven and onto the counter top. Miraculously only burning myself once.
When we all finished, I began to eye the dishes and the horrid pile was eyeing me too. I insisted that no one help me in the kitchen tonight, not even for clean up.
The guys were putting the last finishing touches on the new hall and bringing the brand new supply of cots and sleeping bags they had gotten on the last run out of the outside shed.
I’d avoided the dishes long enough so I ran the water and started the suds, pulling my hair to the side of my neck so as not to be swinging in my face. Almost immediately I felt hands on my hips, squeezing affectionately.
Merrick’s warm breath teased at the back of my neck. I thought they were going to be down the hall for a while but maybe they got done sooner than they thought or maybe he snuck away, to be alone with me. Hmmm.
I tried to turn to look at him but he wrapped his arms tight around my stomach and kissed my neck.
“That’s gonna get you in trouble, mister,” I crooned but he didn’t speak.
I didn’t think about it at first, because who else would be kissing me, but the feeling that something was off was too much to dismiss.
Horror washed over me.
My heart slammed painfully and my stomach heaved. I realized with certainty that it was definitely not Merrick. I knew what Merrick’s lips felt like, what his warmth felt like. I tried to look again and he grabbed the back of my neck, pushing me up against the counter, pressing his body against mine.
He kissed me harder, moving down my shoulder and back up to my ear with me trying to turn the whole time and him shoving me forward into the counter so as not to see his face. Not Merrick. He wouldn’t be rough with me like that. Oh God. Everyone was down the hall and this was...
Phillip.
Without turning I know it was him. Should I scream? No one would hear me down there with the record player going and the noise from the tools. If I made him angry, who knew what he’d do with no one here to stop him but, I couldn’t just sit here and make out with him!
“Phillip...don’t.”
He must have known already that I had figured it out because he never even flinched at his name or my plea.
“Stop,” I said and meant to be assertive but it came out breathy and weak.
Nothing, not a word but his grip tightened a little and I winced.
“Phillip, please. You’re hurting me.”
Nothing. My heart pounded out of my chest and the angry and scared moisture sprung to my eyes. I searched the sink for a weapon of some sort but there was nothing but plates. Dang it. I would use them if I had to, though I certainly couldn’t outrun him.
“Phillip-”
“Admit it,” he interrupted me with his mouth on my ear. “That feels good on your skin...you like it, don’t you? See? Merrick isn’t the only one that knows how to make you happy. He isn’t the only one who knows what you like.”
He swung me around forcefully to face him, squeezing my arms so tight, I could feel my pulse under his fingertips.
I heard the crash as the stack of plates fell to the floor at our feet but I couldn’t look at the mess. My eyes were fearfully locked with Phillip’s. He pulled me closer, pausing just before my face, still looking in my eyes.
His eyes looked excited and bright.
He grabbed my jaw none too gently with his other hand and pulled me as close to him as possible, my eyes were still open wide with waiting.
“Phillip, No! Please! Don’t do this,” I half yelled.
He kissed me. I tried to struggle but his grip was so tight I could barely move at all in my slightness. Why did I have to be so helpless?
I fought him as best I could, my fist pushing at his chest but to no avail. I closed my lips tight and kept hitting and pushing him but he grabbed both my arms and squeezed them around my back, pulling them back too far and I gasped in pain. He must have been trying for that outcome because he used that opportunity with my mouth open wide in pain and took it with his.
He thrust his tongue so far into my mouth like he was trying to plant something, some idea or notion to make me love him. His tongue swept back and forth and his lips were hard and punishing.
He groaned which made it even worse. He was enjoying himself. Though he was hurting me he was enjoying it! I felt the panic welling up as the truth I didn’t want to see came to face me.
He was not going to stop.
The tears came and fell, spilling over to roll down my cheeks. He didn’t stop or pause or really even look at me. I fought, tasting the salty tears in my mouth, knowing he could taste them too. I tried to kick him but he stood his ground.
Eventually he pulled back and by that time, my arms were aching with the release and blood rushing back into them. It was so painful but the prickles didn’t distract me. He held my arms in front of me and began to explain his reasons.
I tried not to throw up.
“There. See? We can be together just as easily as you and him. You were my destiny. Mine! That...freak got in the way and messed up everything! You were suppose to come here and be with me. I knew you would come, I knew it.
“The minute I saw you outside the store that night I knew you were the one I’d been waiting for. You can’t love that thing, that alien, that inhuman monster. I won’t let you screw all this up for us
. We don’t need to worry about the world, we can live down here together with mom and have our own family. Our children will be gorgeous,” he whispered and caressed my cheek and lips with his fingers. “Just like you are, sweetness.”
As he spoke that last sentence I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I screamed, kicked and punched as hard as I could but he still held me still enough to kiss me again. His hands wrapped around my upper arms, squeezing hard.
He was trying to make me believe him. He was angry and taking it out on my unarmed and fragile body.
He pushed me hard backwards against the counter top. I bumped into the sharp edge of it with my lower back hard enough to take my breath, and I cried out into his kiss but, it only came out as a whimper. He pressed so hard on my lips I could barely take a breath and the skin on my face and neck burned from his coarse unshaved face rubbing.
He pressed his face to my neck.
“Mmm, you smell so good,” he all but growled.
He took his hand, wrapped it up in my hair pulling back hard and grunting in satisfaction when I gasped as he kissed my neck roughly.
Didn’t he care that he was hurting me?
Then suddenly, my silent prayer was answered. Someone pulled Phillip off and threw him across the kitchen. He landed on the table and rolled, falling to the other side on the floor with an audible thud against the wall.
Jeff.
He grabbed onto me, pulling me to him before I collapsed to the floor.
I held his shirt in my fists for leverage and grounding to help pull myself up, but he didn’t need my help. He pulled me to him easily and let me bury my face in his warm shoulder, away from Phillip’s gaze and I couldn’t do anything but sob as I felt Jeff’s soothing hand on the back of my head.
“Phillip. You better run,” Jeff growled in a voice that gave me goose bumps.
He wasn’t telling him to run away for fear of his life, he was telling him his life would be in danger if he didn’t run away, from him.
“Sherry!” Phillip got up and leaned on the table to plead with me. “It was supposed to be this way. Don’t let him ruin it!”
“That’s it,” Jeff said angrily and started to take me to sit in a chair.
“Sherry. We belong together.” He took a step away as he spoke. “I can love you, he can’t. Come with me. Our kids would bring real people back, not these...freaks. We can be our own family. We don’t need anybody else,” Phillip pleaded with me as he inched closer to the kitchen door frame.
“I can’t have children.”
That was all I could say as I stared into Jeff’s chest, fisting his shirt. Phillip and Jeff both looked at me.
“What? What do you mean?” Phillip said, even more angry, then a flash of something in his eyes. He looked surprised, off centered and quickly back pedaled. “Look... Marissa, she willed me to do it, ok? Sorry.”
The first lie in the whole bunch. He actually believed everything else he had said which made it sound completely true.
He really was insane.
I couldn’t be angry or worried or scared. I couldn’t speak or think anymore. I just cried. Jeff didn’t leave me to chase Phillip as he made a break for it.
I was glad because I would have crumpled to the floor without him holding me up. I felt my tears soaking into the front of his gray t-shirt.
He wrapped his warm Keeper arms around me and shh’ed me, telling me it was alright, that Phillip was gone, that I was safe. He calmed me just like a human would.
My arms throbbed and pulsed where Phillip had squeezed them but, that was hard to concentrate on because I could feel my pulse in my head too. Everywhere, pounding, pleading for clarity but all I got was fog. A haze trapping me in a state of uncontrollable shaking and crying.
Apparently, someone must have seen or heard and went to tell Merrick and the rest because they all ran our way through the commons room. Or Jeff called them, that was more likely.
They were an angry lynch mob, not knowing what was going on but just that someone was in trouble and they had to do something about it.
Merrick didn’t know it was me who was hurt. His eyes were wide with surprise and horror as he pushed through the crowd at the door with that ‘oh no, what now’ face.
“Sherry?” Merrick yelled through the crowd.
The lynch mob was stunned as well. I couldn’t help but think as I looked at them that I was so tired of playing the damsel role.
Jeff handed me over gently to Merrick who pulled me in and grabbed my face in his warm hands. The hands I should have recognized weren’t there from the first second Phillip touched me.
“Sherry? Honey, what happened?” Merrick asked me with a very worried face but, I had no idea what to tell him so I just stayed silent and buried my face in his shirt.
“Talk to me,” he said lifting my face with his finger to look at him but I still stayed silent as I struggled to maintain his gaze.
Merrick turned to Jeff and started searching his brain for what happened.
“Don’t, Merrick. Just let me tell you what happened,” Jeff pleaded, but must feel it as I heard him sigh exasperatingly.
Too late. Merrick had seen the gruesome scene through Jeff’s eyes and made it one hundred times more painful and real than it was before. I felt the heaving of Merrick’s chest as he tried to contain his anger and breathing.
I had a feeling I was about to be passed off to someone else so the manhunt could begin. Thank God Jeff didn’t see and hear the rest of it. I feared he may have killed him himself.
Trudy came pushing through the line. She looked as if she already knew what happened. Jeff was gone in a blur of colors.
“Oh, sugar...he didn’t,” Trudy said slowly and looked at me horrified and knowingly.
I knew she knew. I couldn’t bear to face her and tell her son did this to me, so I turned and put my face in Merrick’s arm around my head, the silent tears and shaking came again.
“Trudy, I’m sorry...but...I’ve got to...” I heard Merrick begin but stopped, choking on his words.
“It’s ok, sugar. Go. I understand,” she said softly.
She reached her arms for me and I stiffened, gripping his shirt tighter, not wanting to leave Merrick. I glanced up at his face, it was tight with anger but he didn’t say anything, just nodded. I reluctantly moved towards Trudy’s still outreached arms, but my fist were pried in Merrick’s shirt.
He pulled my fingers away gently with a pained look on his face and ran from the room with blurred speed, before I could convince him to stay. The onlookers weren’t there anymore, they were giving us space and privacy.
“Where’s Danny?” I asked her, trying to stop the uncomfortable and uncontrollable heaving from my crying.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t with us, maybe he’s with Celeste.”
Good. Telling him was one thing, but just like with Merrick, seeing it with your own eyes made it so much worse. Danny would be furious, too.
I didn’t want to think about that or anything else. I wanted Trudy to just put me in my room but I couldn’t be in the dark alone. I couldn’t.
“I’m sorry about your plates, Mrs. Trudy,” was what came out when I finally tried to speak to her again.
“Honey, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that... I’m the one who should be sorry.” She held back a sob but barely managed to get her words out. “I figured he might try something, but I never imagined...this. He talked about you all the time, baby, but I kept telling him that you and Merrick were happy and to leave you alone. I should’ve said something to you. I’m so sorry.”
“You can’t blame yourself for this,” I countered.
“Did he...succeed?”
“No. Jeff came-” I had to stop because the tears were chocking my words.
“My own flesh and blood. His father was not a nice man. He started out that way, but eventually turned into something else. He didn’t raise those boys right in the way of women. I’m sorry, honey, and I’m not m
aking excuses for him.”
“Of course not. I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“I just wish you didn’t have to deal with this either. I wish I was stronger or bigger...or something.”
“Honey, you’re just fragile and people take advantage of that sometimes. I’m sorry. Tell me what you need? You want to go lie down?”
“Yes...but...can I sleep with you until Merrick gets back, please?”
“Of course, sugar. Come on.”
Through the doorway to the commons room, I could see a huddled mass of people trying to busy themselves and not look at us. Danny came out of the back wash room, Celeste in tow. He had no clue and one look at me would send him into a frenzy. He looked up before I could turn. He released Celeste’s hand and ran to me franticly.
“What happened!?”
I had no idea what I looked like but it was probably a mess to make him run to me like that. I could not say the words to describe what almost happened to me so Trudy tried instead.
“Phillip. He...” Trudy started but was crying too. She couldn’t say those words either.
“He what?” he asked the question but by his tone, he knew the answer.
He could tell by our faces and I could tell by his constricted voice, he knew.
“He tried,” Trudy finally managed out.
She handed me over to him gently and then ran to her room in the back, crying loudly. I saw one of the other ladies run after her, Kay I thought.
I was getting dizzy from all the passing me off. There was enough tear soaked shirts already. Danny took me into his chest tucking me under his chin, not wanting me to see his face but, I could feel him shaking with anger.
Celeste stood off to the side, her hands covering her mouth with eyes wide. Danny looked at her.
“I’m taking her to bed,” was all he said before leading me to my room, tucked under his arm protectively.
At first I thought he would leave me there and I’d have to beg him to stay but no, he just laid down with me. I shrunk into his arm, trying not to cry but not able to stop the tears from coming in wave after wave of embarrassing, painful long sweeps.