Summertime June

Part 6: Doors and More

We must have sat for hours. June in her chair, and me on that little bed. At least it felt like hours if time truly has any real tangible feeling. I could hear everything and nothing, all at once. My heartbeat sounded softly in the back of my head, the constant pulsing reminding me that we were in fact still alive, even if we didn't know where we were. June had long since stopped speaking. Her list of startling revelations seemed to have taken all the energy she possessed. She sat staring blankly at the opposite wall, still watching the sunlight dance across the floor. We would have gone on like this for an age, I have no doubt. Except, the singing stopped. 

It should have occurred to me that the singing was still happening somewhere in the background of my mind, but somehow in the midst of processing everything June had told me, I had lost track of it. They do say that the human brain can only juggle seven things at once, and I suppose that between logic-defying alternate realities and all-of-a-sudden-not-so-imaginary people coming to life, I had relegated the singing to the furthest most recess of my mind, probably the same place that "white noise" is stored. So, when the singing all of a sudden stopped, the silence was deafening. June sat up straight as if she was a marionette on a string. She looked at me and then turned her head to the door in the corner of the room. That door with no lock that, maddeningly, was without a doubt LOCKED. 

"What is it June, did you hear something?" I barely breathed the question, scared to upset the unnatural silence that had settled in the room. 

"He's coming." her response was clipped.

"He? Caleb? How do you know?" rapid-fire questions, one after the next. The heartbeat that had been pulsing softly settled into an erratic two-step somewhere in the region of my throat. 

"I can just-" her reply was cut short; we had both heard the turning of the door's knob. There was no mistaking that sound.

June reached over and placed her hand in mine, holding on as though I was the only thing keeping her in place. Even in my own fear, I knew this to be a truly worrying sign; I had always gone to June for comfort, not the other way around. 

The aforementioned door began to slowly slide further into the room, and with it came the stranger from the kitchen in my home. Lavender eyes, eerie calm. I swallowed the scream that was itching to tear itself from my vocal cords. The sight we must have been, June and I huddled together as though our lives were about to be handed over to perdition. 

As he walked into the room, Caleb carefully shut the door behind him, his back turned to us. He did not speak at first, and I, half out of my mind with fear and uncertainty, found this unbearably rude. I began to open my mouth to speak, to say anything that would break the mounting tension,  but just as the words were forming on my lips, June squeezed my hand firmly and Caleb turned. 

"I'm sorry to have caused you both such a fright, it was not my intention, I assure you." he looked genuinely concerned as he said this, as if our reactions were tantamount to hysteria. 

June shrank back into herself, and I confess I could not muster the courage to reply. 

"I thought at first that you must recognize me, June. I have seen you before, I knew your face immediately. But then you ran from me...." he inclined his head towards June as he said this, his eyes questioning. 

June, for her part, looked akin to death. I had never seen her so pale as I did then. Her lips trembled as she fought to form her words: "How do you know me, Sir?"

Caleb's eyebrows raised as he took in her question. "You mean you do not know, then?" he answered with a question in kind.

"Know what?" I intoned, simply because it seemed that the question needed to be asked, and after about a minute I knew that June was not going to ask it. 

Caleb made a sound of frustration and ran his hand through his hair. Everything about him indicated an innate sense of control, and this apparently was not what he considered "under control". 

"They didn't tell me that I would have to explain this to you. I must admit I was not prepared...." he shook his head as the sentence died off of his lips. He appeared to consider us both for a moment, considered the room that we were in, and shook his head once more

"Honestly, you would think that they would have more furniture in these rooms by now," he muttered to himself as he walked to the door, opened it, stepped outside of the room, and stepped back inside with a chair in his right hand. This he placed directly across from where June and I had remained sitting, and carefully, he too sat down. 

He gave June an appraising look and then regarded me with a nod. "I suppose I should start at the beginning. My name is Caleb, although June, I'm sure you were aware of this already?" he inquired and she nodded stiffly.

"Well, that's the introductions then. Now to the rest of it. We have met twice before, though I'm almost certain that you did not, at the time, understand why. No, I AM certain." he punctuated this statement with another raised eyebrow. 

"I came to you in times of great duress, times where I felt that you may have been in danger. That much is not unusual. That's all a part of my job, you see. What is unusual, is that you could see me, too." he looked bemused as he said this. 

June was still sitting in complete silence, but I had begun to have a thought in the back of my mind, an impossible thought. It couldn't be. 

"Sir, when you said it was all a part of your job..." I trailed off as his eyes met mine, suddenly unsure of how to ask the question. It seemed impossible in my mind.

Caleb looked frankly back at June and said: "I'm your Guardian, do you understand? As in, Angel." 

June fainted. I screamed.