The Lazarus Effect

Chapter 4: Scarlet Letter

He was so talented it was offensive to my less sensible tastes.

"You do listen," he cooed when I filled the Brita water through the filter not letting it run overtop back into the vessel through the cracks.

I broke my first bone around a round table game of dice. Slipped on my winning snake eyes. Bunco! Even at fourteen years old, I refused crutches. The moment the rubber tips and not my feet would ground me first warranted every fall and break thereafter. The restraints were just for show. The sun on all sides is like an island.  The slop was a red paste.

No one knew the severity until the third day. Some doors weren't to keep you out but to keep something in. In all of those bodies, who was I trying to save?  The city comes to me in birds smacking into my windows. I see a person and their shadow; they see a white wall. I heard whispers of Po' Jim and all that earned him his name through the vine. 

He didn't live on our side of the street... so I left most of his sins go unnoticed. I hardly spared a look toward the bulk of his howling. I gleaned most of the world from my peripheral vision. I was on edge until someone of authority draped a blanket over the eyesore. 

Not everyone was built to be a preservationist or to be preserved. 

I had no key to his home and would not go so below as to ring a broken doorbell. Or knock twice. I twiddle my thumbs at the front door, in anticipation of an unfriendly face to greet my affront on their property, and say something newly difficult to transmute, such as "What do you hope to accomplish with your bottomless pity?" And I'd stand there lifeless because I am not good at improv until you pull the stool. The door would slam in my face, and I would slink down the sidewalk as all Samaritans affected by the double-edged sword of bringing their own step stool. 

How good you were and how owed, but of course, won't ask for, but if you insist. It was the law of restoration. Every time I meet someone, I pretend all their stories are true and without a happy ending. I lay alone in a bed we once shared, and all the faucets ran their hot water cold. 

If vultures circle me, I was on the right track. Sometimes you get to the part in the True Crime documentary where the only way forward is more bodies. 

Who buys a murder house with a grand view of a brick wall? When Pa said, sold! now that made sense. Ma was going that way too in the end, losing her vision. and her singing voice. A locksmith was scheduled for Wednesday at noon, but I couldn't stop checking the locks. I had rented Room 29. Although, any motel with a ceiling fan and a second way to bar the door was home sweet home. 

I tipped the girl at the counter, and she told me the world needed people like me. I thought, what divine world runs on fire?

I travel light, like a bird that has only known the sky. No one stone is identical. Not even the ones pulled from the same river. 

My life is the movie Tangled. Down to the chameleon on my shoulder and the castle guard for a mother. We were both in the arena. On one side was a sword and on the other side, was a shield.

Love carves a home from your body with the object of your affection. You'll maneuver three tongues, two hearts, one mind—all for one, one for all. Any landlord with a skeleton key knew a tenant taken hostage was just a hostage. What did that make the Hostage Negotiator?  

Once you work your first crime scene, you become a piece of evidence. You are no longer playing detective when your footsteps become clues. 

I am standing still on a moving train, watching the world shrink from the window. The witch had not cursed me, she had me poisoned with a slow-acting absorbent.

3 years passed by in months. I met a Wakan at a bar in my first dry year. I was picking bones out of my snapper. Keeping her safely in the fringe. 

"Every time I park in Richmond, I look for a ticket in the windshield."

In a Publix parking lot, a missionary of, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints flags me down to tell me that God brought us together.  One foot is a brick on the brake, the other capriciously taps the gas. 

He is right. Not for the reason either of us assumed. Or burned our candles to wicks for. I had enough crosses to bear. I am no martyr; I was too gun-shy for that. I believed in any exception that allowed me to point back at anyone raising their silver at me. Up and with sleep shaken from my grasp, I went to task marking the bible with a neon yellow highlighter. Question mark addendums and other pearls of tangential nihilism.  I asked my cousin if she believed in God. She answered in her quietest of voices, "What is there not to believe?"

The cross Ma bore on her neck, was much heavier than the heart it rested upon.

Why had Oti led me here? There was nothing for anyone here. Twins never missed each other. They were poltergeists and the inhabited hosts. 

 In the nebula, they made us again and again. He looks at me like he is crossing a busy street. "Haven't you heard the Elder's stories? 

"You hit the water once and the blue changes you."

Eventually, the Earth would swallow us up, but until then, we were led by the faint light of the moon.

"It has been a while."

"Too long?"

 "Never."

"You ever catch sight of the beyond?"

You know better than to wade through the swamps. Words bring wondrous, untamable beasts to rise from the forgotten lands. The last I'd seen of Mama was when I was too young and too old to care what blocks fit what shapes. The world made a deal between four souls, theirs, the parents, and the open water. For two souls you must pay double the price. 

Now that we were all aboard the same sinking vessel, who would assume the role of the captain? In the dark woods, I whisper not his name, but the witches. She whispers back, "Go back to the water, you will find me there."

Leaving the island was always a plan spoken to the skies. Where could we go knowing we would never return?

Hera said I was a witness on that awful day, either I had never taken in a single correct detail of my life, or I was still in a dream. Look!

A sun dies twice. When it knows it's on fire and when it isn't. I feel no less for you than the dog that waited at the train tracks long after its owner died. I put my sword down and he picked up a double-edged blade. Two heads are better than one. He had rematerialized out of thin air. He had no crown, but I knew a king when I saw one. Especially, as I was his Queen. Consciousness crept back to me like a hesitant traveler, unsure of its welcome into a new 

. We moved ahead, two halves of a whole, seeking answers in a land untouched by the apocalypse that had once defined our existence. 

 The Watchers never interfered, but when the blood was spilled, a couple closed their eyes.

Which Afterlife is this?