Girl Desecrated 1984: Vampires, Asylums and Highlanders, page 16
Brushing the hair away from my eyes, he said, “Today, Rachel, Aam only going tae kiss ye.”
I’d never had such a promise from a man.
“On your Scottish honour?” I probed, tilting my chin, suspiciously. “Even if I beg you for more?”
In a somber brogue, he vowed, “Ah swear it oan th’ souls of my dead ancestors, and by th’ honour of th’ McNab clan, Ah wulnae dae more than kiss ye thes day.”
The gravity of his speech shivered along my skin.
I bit my bottom lip. “That’s a bit much, but okay.”
He chuckled. “Yer a saucy one, ye are.”
I giggled. “But do you like it? That’s the question.”
He locked down my joking with a smoldering look. “Ah want ye like nothing Ah’ve ever wanted in this world.”
His eyes were burning like Northern lights, flickering between green and gold, and the hunger of his scrutiny spent my will. I slipped my arms around his neck and kissed him until my lips were buzzing. Until a spin started up behind my eyelids, making me light and feathery. His hand cupped my jaw as he tilted me in a slight dip, my head nestled firmly in the crook of his arm. Then his kiss became more demanding until I thought I would faint from the intensity.
The last chards of distrust I had been hoarding in my heart quivered and faded away under his attentive pursuit. With a whimper, I gave in fully to his demands, giving him full access to my being. He knew the moment of my surrender and marked it with a grunt of approval.
~
CHAPTER 16: BLOOD MAKES THE LINE
~
A SHARP HAMMERING ON THE front door jerked me out of Angus’ arms as if I’d been zapped by an electric surge.
“Open up! I know you have a man in there!” A voice shouted.
“Omigod!” I fisted my hand against my mouth. “It’s the landlord.”
Dread dropped into the pit of my stomach like a stone.
Angus’ confused look turned to something between determination and fury as he took in my reaction.
He crossed his arms and stood like a sentinel in the centre of my apartment. “Open the door,” he told me, his voice as cold as a Canadian winter.
I hesitated, sure I’d get the boot this time, but Angus’ grim nod spurred me forward. I opened the door a crack.
My landlord stood outside in his typical handyman jeans and plaid jacket. The skin on his face was purple and blotchy, maybe from the fall weather, maybe from anger. He was literally vibrating with outrage. If my home hadn’t been on the line, I might have laughed, for his nose was quivering like a rats.
“I know you’ve got a man in there,” he accused, pushing up the side of his grey toque.
I slouched to take up the two-inch difference between us, making myself appear less of an Amazon.
“I can explain…” I tried to think of a quick lie, a reason why I’d broken the house rules.
He pushed his chest out.
“Rachel.” Angus spoke impatiently behind me.
Caught between the two of them, I stepped back, opening the door wider until the landlord was standing directly in Angus’ line of view.
The quivering stopped when he looked past my head at Angus filling the space behind me. He pulled his toque lower over his brows and set his jaw.
“What’s the problem?” Angus asked. He was speaking slowly, enunciating without his accent.
The landlord stepped forward and I stepped back. Angus took hold of my elbow and gently moved me to the side, making room for the landlord to enter.
Keeping a wary eye on Angus, he pulled off his work glove and shook his finger at me. “You know the rules! You’re not to have a man in this apartment.”
I shrunk back from the spit flying from the man’s mouth.
“That’s archaic, and very probably, illegal.” Angus said. He stepped closer. “She pays her way.”
I did a mental check, trying to remember if I had paid the last month’s rent.
“You,” the landlord turned to him, “have nothing to say about this.”
Then he turned back to me, “And you… Is he going to give you a home when you lose this one? Is he?”
The question embarrassed me, and I avoided Angus’ eyes. “No one needs to give me a home.”
“Well you have one here, missy, and you’re throwing it away, for what?”
Terror gripped me as I thought about being back on the street. The landlord looked Angus up and down, scathingly, then turned back to me. “Is it worth a quick screw with this Neanderthal?” He thumbed at Angus.
Angus grabbed his hand, twisting it to the left. The landlord squealed like a pig, and dropped down on one knee.
“What are you doing?” I cried out in shock.
“Apologize to the lady,” Angus demanded, never taking his eyes from the landlord, moaning at his feet.
“Stop it!” I hissed, clawing at his hand.
“I’ll set the police on you…”
Angus gave another twist and the landlord squawked, grabbing his elbow with his other hand.
“Apologize.”
I couldn’t make Angus stop. At that moment, I was invisible to them both and that terrified me.
“I apologize,” the landlord sputtered. “I’m sorry. Damn you!”
Angus threw the man’s hand away from him, and the landlord fell forward onto the rug near my feet.
I stood speechless, my eyes filling with tears.
You’ll pay for this.” The landlord scrambled up and staggered to the door. “And you, missy…” His eyes were bloodshot. “You better start packin’.”
The floodgates threatened to burst as a sob rose in my throat.
I’d just lost the only place I could call home, and I didn’t have first and last month’s rent for another. My survival skills kicked in, as my first tear cut loose from my lashes and dropped through the air to the rug. I watched the landlord barrel out the door. A mental numbness spread through me like a frosty mold.
“Wait!” I rushed out the door after the landlord, catching the back of his jacket as he reached the top stair.
“Please,” I insisted.
I glanced back over my shoulder, but Angus hadn’t come out of my apartment. “Please, we can talk…”
The landlord turned with a triumphant sneer.
I gulped and whispered, “Later.”
A hungry look darkened the landlord’s eyes and everything good and sweet unveiled by Angus, dried up and hardened like obsidian.
“Get rid of him,” he ordered.
I resisted the impulse to tell him to go to hell, wiped the last tear from my eye, and nodded.
The landlord dug in his chest pocket with his uninjured hand and pulled out the cassette tape that had been on my kitchen table the night before. He held it out to me, and I could see there was no ribbon streaming from it.
“I fixed it for you.”
He fixed it?
Sometime between last night and now, he’d been in my apartment. Either when I was at the Homeward, or when I’d been sleeping.
I didn’t want to touch the tape. “Thanks.” I reached out to take it from his grasp.
He trapped my hand with his short stubby fingers. “Later.” His eyes glittered like mica.
I turned away to hide my disgust. The cold wind whipped away the last of my warmth as I stared down at the open door to my apartment.
The beautiful moment I’d just shared with Angus was ruined forever. I had to take care of myself. There was no one else to help me. Gulping down my nausea, I took the steps down, one at a time and each concrete block was a marker for each brick in the emotional wall I resurrected inside, hardening myself against love, against trust, against the promise of what I thought Angus was going to be.
I gently closed the door before looking at him.
Angus stood glowering beside my couch.
“Ye should nae have gone out with him. Ah had it under control.”
I raised my eyes and gave him the ice look.
“You don’t tell me what to do!”
I let my rage loose to flare hot and destructive. It filled me, fueling my words without care for his feelings or my future or what we could have.
“You do not control my life!”
“What did ye promise him?”
“Anything,” I spit the word at him. “Anything that will allow me to stay here.”
His face was red and a vein pulsed at his temple. “Is that all yoo’re worth?”
“How dare you!” I shouted. “You just screwed up my life, and you expect me to leave it that way?”
“Ye dorn’t have a life, Rachel.”
“I did until I met you.”
I didn’t know then how true these words would become.
I pointed at the door. “Get out!”
I was shaking with anger, not sure what I would do if he wouldn’t leave, when I suddenly choked on my spit. I coughed into my hand, but my mouth kept filling with liquid. Hacking, I coughed out a spray of red between my fingers.
Angus’ face reflected my alarm. I wiped my chin with my hand. It came away slicked with blood.
“Are ye a-right, lass?” He stepped forward, opening his arms to me.
I side-stepped him, moving quickly to the kitchen sink, my hand cupped beneath my chin as the tinny taste pooled under my tongue. Over the sink, I opened my mouth and watched the slick red drops fall.
Angus had moved up beside me.
I turned my back on him and tried to spit the blood out to clear my mouth enough to speak, but it kept coming.
“Dorn’t be alarmed lass, I kin what’s happening,” he said from behind me.
I unravelled a handful of paper towel and dabbed the inside of my mouth to figure out where the blood was coming from.
His hand on my back was all I could take. Hot tears fell to mix with the blood coagulating in the bottom of my stained metal sink.
“Yoo’re going tae be a-right.”
I was bleeding from my mouth. How was that alright?
“This is natural fur ye.”
I spit into the sink. “What?” My voice was slurred. “What does that even mean?”
I put the paper towel over my mouth and turned to look at him, sniffing.
“This is part of ye, it’s a journey that was set from the day ye were born.”
What is?” I mumbled into the wad.
He held his hands out. “Ah dorn’t kin why ye weren’t told.”
I stamped my foot. “Told what!”
He took my hand in his, even though it was smeared with dried blood. “Told aboot us. Aboot what we have tae dae.”
Angus was talking crazy and if my mouth wasn’t filling up again, I would have laughed out loud, because the irony was too much. The one man I had found, the one man I could have loved… turns out to be crazier than me.
I shook my head slowly, side to side, unable to believe it.
“Kit, dorn’t…”
Angus tried to hold onto my hand, but I pulled it away and pointed at the door.
He looked troubled. “Destiny, Kit.”
“Bullshit,” I took the towel from my face and pushed the word out.
Blood trickled out of the corner of my mouth and ran down my chin.
“Please leave,” I spoke through the gore.
He didn’t move.
I turned and gagged into the sink.
“When yoo’re ready tae hear the truth, Ah’ll caem back,” he said, softly.
The door shut behind him, and I held back my tears and drooled blood into the sink.
Once the bleeding slowed, I had found its source. Above my incisors, slits, like shark gills, in my gums were oozing a mixture of blood and water. Had Angus passed on some fast-acting venereal disease through his kiss?
I patted my gums until the leeching stopped. Then I washed my face and cleaned the sink. Turning, I took in my empty apartment. Empty without Angus in it.
Blinking my eyes rapidly, I drew out my old friend, anger, to kill the hurt. It was like lancing a boil. Once you see the pus, you forget about the cut.
I looked for something to take my rage out on. The cassette tape was on the counter. I screamed and swiped it with my hand. It ricocheted off the wall and rattled like old bones as it fell behind the fridge.
CHAPTER 17: LIES BENEATH THE LEAVES
~
MY RAGE WAS STILL LOOSE, whipping up all kinds of self-destructive impulses, including throwing the teapot across the room. I showed rare restraint by carefully pouring the tea down the drain. The tea bags flopped wetly into the sink. The delicate bags had broken open and were spilling mushy leaves into the drain. I poured hot tea over them.
The amber liquid trickled along and pooled in the gouges and dents in my stainless-steel sink. The colour of the tea against the steel reminded me of Angus’ hair in the morning sun. If the landlord had minded his own business, I would have been running my hands through Angus’ locks. I would have been happy.
I wouldn’t be worried about losing my place. I wouldn’t be contemplating letting the creep touch me.
The tea dwindled out of the spout and my anger dwindled with it, replaced by a heavy ache of loss and regret. I shouldn’t have broken the rules. When I break the rules, I get broken. I knew that.
Some part of me wondered if it wasn’t just as well things turned out bad. Something was off about Angus. I mean, everything was good, but he knew things he shouldn’t know. He showed up where he shouldn’t be. But he was so damn sexy, I kept ignoring my instincts.
Even knowing something was wrong, maybe even dangerous after that little episode with the landlord, my lips weren’t about to forget his kiss anytime soon. Hot tears washed my eyes, and I swiped at them with the back of my hand.
But the reality was, Angus wasn’t going to take care of me. He didn’t offer, even when the landlord asked if he would. I had to take care of myself.
I walked to my side table and grabbed another of Casbus’ specials. Placing it under my tongue, the pill slowly dissolved.
Outside my window, the landlord’s Firebird roared to life.
I knelt on the bed and cautiously pulled up the corner of the curtain.
The car backed out of the lane.
The landlord was gone. I flopped down onto my bed and let out a loud sigh. I needed to get good and drunk before I could face his upcoming visit. Then I’d be unaware of whatever he did. That way I could stand it. Maybe.
The pill tasted bitter. I got up and grabbed a glass, Just as I was about to turn on the tap I noticed the fine tea leaves had settled into weird shapes in the bottom of the sink. I set the glass down and examined the mounds. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but I knew it was not random.
I’d had some experience with this sort of thing before. When my mom would get too fanatical, I used to escape to my friend’s house, and her step-mother would read my tea leaves. There is a delicious sense of justice in having your future told, after being Bible whipped with the Old Testament.
With a quick glance over my shoulder to dispel the imaginary baleful and disapproving glance of my absent mother, I tried to read the leaves in the sink.
The first shape was round with four lines coming up from the top. Each line was slightly tapered and then spread out. It looked like a puffer fish or a broken tennis racket, though neither had anything to do with my life. The X was there. It was always there. It was the warning to stop, and it was expected in a derailed life like mine. I ignored it.
I was looking for something new, something hopeful. Maybe not quite a heart, but some guidance about Angus, about who he was, about whether I could trust him.
In the random sludge, a strange shape, almost like a bouncing ball trail with a quick directional change, caught my eye. I had never seen this one before. Using the tip of a knife, I separated the intersecting arch points. The broken symbol had no meaning I knew of, so I carefully joined the points back together, and then separated another spot.
“Just like the dinosaur skeleton is in the tar pit, the message rises up through the leaves.” I whispered.
Leaking out the last rivulets of clear amber liquid was the shape of an arch. I had never read the arch, but I guessed my friend’s step-mother had. With the symbol separated from the clump, it was simple to see the natural division in what was left.
I grabbed a notepad and pencil and carefully sketched out the symbols. When I was sure the rest was random nonsense, I twisted on the tap and watched while the water spattered out and washed away the mess.
Each symbol had to be read together because the reading was for me. But three of the symbols were tied together and had to be parted, which could mean the reading had another connection. I was going to need help making sense of it.
The phone’s shrill ring cut through my thoughts, and I almost fell off my chair.
“Judas!” I cursed.
I grabbed my pencil before it rolled off the table, then made my way to the phone.
Lifting the beige handset on the third ring, I answered. “Hello?”
“Have you checked the children?” A fake male voice said.
I rolled my eyes. My most irritating friend and the last thing I needed…
“Magda.”
“Whatcha doin?” She asked in her singsong way.
My initial irritation slipped away, as I confessed I’d been thinking about her step-mom and how she could help me understand the tea leaves.
“Is Jean around?”
“Yes…” A soft noise shuffled in the background. “But first, I want you to listen to this!”
The phone line launched a song into my ear that was definitely not Magda’s typical heavy metal listening. It sounded more like a rock-a-billy, love ballad and at this moment, love was the last thing I wanted to think about.
“Magda!” I hollered into the mouthpiece.
The serenade continued.
“Magda!”
Just as I was about to hang up, she came back on the phone. “Well?”
I sighed in exasperation, “Smooth…” and then tried to get to the point. “Listen…”
“It’s Robert Plant!” She squeaked excitedly. “I swear, he’s back and this is his new song, “Sea of Love”. I can’t get enough of it! It’s perfect for shadow boxing.”
