Sublime Messages

Ten, A

Ruby didn't tell her father she'd found the bodies in the pool house. She also didn't tell him her real thoughts about anything at all after that day. She'd walked on glass around him, wary, always knowing he had everything but her best interest in mind and all right with that fact so long as he gave her space. At first, he required only simple tasks of her, like helping clear out the rooms of furniture and decor so he could sell as much as possible. She asked few questions, and Daddy seemed to prefer that, he leaving during the daylight hours and returning with food in the evenings, she staying indoors as he'd requested so as not to be seen and questioned. Their existence carried on quietly for a few weeks before Ruby found herself becoming quite bored. Her father had quickly sold the televisions as well as nearly all the furniture. The girl didn't understand the man's endgame, what exactly he was trying to do, but she refrained from conversation as much as possible. She was fed, wasn't she? She slept in a warm house with a pillow and blanket (the box springs and mattresses and bed frames had been picked up in pieces over several days), and she had a toilet and shower. Best of all, still, was that she was left to herself during the days, and the pool was there, even if Daddy hadn't been properly cleaning it.

Ruby took it upon herself to scoop debris out of the water, to try to keep it clean, so that she could swim during the day. The bodies in the poolhouse had most likely disappeared; Ruby figured as much only because the smell had gone, but she'd not garnered the stomach to visually confirm. The plants around the pool had been meticulously cared for, and in order to fill the time, Ruby looked through all of them, kept them watered, and in general decided she'd do her best to keep them alive and happy. She enjoyed finding critters amongst the succulent leaves and exotic flowers: caterpillars and lizards, birds and spiders.

It was strange that no one came to the door, ever. Without saying as much, Ruby knew this wasn't really her father's house, and she wondered how he'd gotten away with it. But she didn't wonder it enough to ask and risk Daddy's anger, especially not until she was ready to leave.

Because she was going to leave, eventually. Of course her father didn't know it, but there was no way Ruby could stay. Things were starting to get pretty dull, and he'd tried to get her to begin reading the Bible (though he had yet to specify what this "work" was that God had chosen them for), and there was, of course, Damien.

Of course.

There'd aways be Damien.

In all her hours of wandering about the nearly empty house, nothing to do but look at a Bible or go out in the backyard and swim or garden, Ruby thought of Damien. Most of the time, she wasn't even consciously thinking of him but was instead just subtly aware that he hovered always just beneath the surface of her more immediate thoughts. Damien had become a sort of foundation for her, the bedrock upon which she'd placed the precarious pillars upholding her frail hopes. What was life—her life or any life—but a dull book whose pages were being lethargically turned by a disinterested reader? So many blocks of sameness contrarily moving too quickly toward a future void of glimmer. Was existence solely fueling the shell-of-a-body so that it could keep stumbling along the path to its inevitable end? Yes, though Ruby had no words to express such ineffable thoughts, she felt the futility of her being. She'd felt it before Whit had gone, before Mama had stopped caring about her, before Damien had tried to kill her, and she felt it even more, now, being with Daddy in this awful limbo. The only tiny bit of sparkle in an otherwise interminable nothing was the hope of one day being with Damien. Everything else was just pretend.

Ruby didn't know how exactly she was going to find Damien or what she'd do when she did find him. She knew only that it would happen, one day, and that when she did finally get him within reach of her hands, she'd never, ever let go, even if, with his hands, he chose to extinguish her life.