Heaven Beside You

                               Chapter One:  Like the Coldest Winter Chill…

By the time I was twenty-three, my encounters with death had begun to pile up.

My parents died when I was eighteen. That singular event defined the rest of my life, but even before then, my life was flooded with the kind of grief that only follows the death of someone close. I was fourteen when my older sister, Tamara, lost her three year old baby boy and my sister overdosed on Valium a month later. The father, my sister's boyfriend, became an alcoholic and tried to rape me once, the night before Christmas. I nearly cut his balls off with a meat cleaver, but my integrity remained intact.

My last living relative died in a nursing home 200 miles away, when I was twenty. By that time, I had no more tears left in me. It was as if I let go of life before it could be taken from me. Death no longer fazed me. I believe that's what attracted him to me.

XxXxXxXxXxXxHeaven Beside YouXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX

I staggered into a satanic ritual unknowingly, one chilly autumn evening.

The people inside the classroom wore black cloaks, like every stereotype of a satanic ritual you've ever seen. They weren't sacrificing a human child or even an animal, but there was a chalk pentagram drawn on the floor and they crowded around it, in a semi-circle. The bones of a goat head were hung on the wall. Candles were lit all around the room.

Immediately, the blood in my veins froze as twelve sets of eyes turned onto me at once. I couldn't see their faces, because of the black hoods they wore, but I could feel their eyes on me, the intensity of their combined hatred.

"Eh-" I mumbled, staggering backward gracelessly. "Wrong room. Sorry."

My back hit the metal door behind me and it fell open. I toppled out into the hall and then righted myself, thinking about how comical it must have been to watch me flee the room like a frightened deer. The hallways of the university were dark, considering the late hour, and it took a longer than usual to find my way. I was pretty certain that the Satanist kooks weren't allowed to be in that classroom, summoning spirits of the darkness, but I wasn't going to tattle.

I really hated a squealer.

The art studio opened up before me at last. I had to input a code to gain access. 03523. Inside, the room was large and mostly white, like an unfinished garage. At the center of the room was a canvas, already outfitted with plain white paper. The paints were on a shelf on the wall, every color imaginable. There were brushes, stuffed into a drawer beneath the paints, but I brought my own. I extracted them from my black messenger bag and then dropped it to the cement floor.

Music was an integral part of the creative experience. I carried a simple, old-style Walkman with me everywhere I went. I couldn't afford anything fancier, but the Walkman held sentimental value. It was my sister's.

The CD in the Walkman on that particular night just happened to be an old Alice in Chains album that I nabbed from a record store when I was sixteen. Most of the CD skipped, because of the scratches on the back, except for one song. I slipped on my headphones and played the song on repeat. I'd like to fly… but my wings have been so denied. I hummed softly to myself as I selected my paints and followed the creative flow inside of me, that inexplicable urging that directed each stroke of my brush.

"You're talented," I heard, more inside my head than outside it. It startled me, and the brush in my hand jerked, sending an unsightly blue smear across the canvas. Beyond perturbed, I whirled around and removed the headphones.