Reach

Chapter Fifteen- To Duel (Or Die)

The stagehand obeyed and locked the door as he left. Roy was once again alone. The only sound was the birds outside the window enjoying the sun.

He wanted to chase after MacKenzie. To run after her and bring her close to him and never let go. She was an untamable and he in return was unfixable.

Roy laid back down with a heavy sigh. He didn't give a damn about the view of the ceiling. He didn't want to look out the window. Everything he looked at looked fake and Roy couldn't touch it. His consciousness felt dead. It felt heavy like his legs. Roy grabbed at his hair, clenching his jaw and squeezing his eyes shut. A thousand pounds weighed him down.

"Why won't you listen," Roy whispered.

It was as if his legs were a pair of best friends who had gotten into a fight and refused to speak to each other, refused to communicate, refused to listen. Refused to talk and work things out. Refused to work at all.

He was at the bottom of a deep, stone-cold well. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't climb out.

Isolated. Detached. 

The quicksand at the bottom of the well pulled him deeper and deeper.

Roy pushed himself up, distracted from the sunlight still streaming in from the window. He loathed it for some reason. The sun was yet another fake object in Roy's life. Behind the sun was always the moon. Behind the moon was the night. 

He carelessly attempted to steady himself on the bedpost with an idea that it would it take no effort, apathetically finding himself on the floor between the bed and wheelchair; one of his biggest phobias that would happen in the presence of strangers, or worse MacKenzie. He misjudged spatial differences, yet he knew his limits when Barnes was standing in front of him.

Simple carelessness, and in return Roy did nothing.

I can't even close the goddamn drapes without looking like an idiot.

He could've pulled himself up into his wheelchair to draw the curtains. He could've left and try to find MacKenzie; but he wasn't sure if the elderly woman she was looking after was on the top or bottom floor. He could've showered and made himself look decent. And looked for a job.

Yet he did nothing. It was too much energy...energy  that he didn't have.

 Roy sat on the floor, eventually giving up and laying down where he was. He no longer stared at the ceiling whenever he was in this position. He stared into empty space, far from the ceiling, far from any consciousness. His awareness of time was unknown. Countless minutes, hours, possible days. How many sheep could he count? He was staring into the abyss and it stared back at him. And the abyss was pretty damn disappointed. The void could have sympathized, right?

His mind screamed at him to do something, to get out of the house. After all, he could now, without MacKenzie. Or so Barnes had said. He hadn't completely trusted what Barnes had said. Roy contemplated at how long Barnes had watched them in bed. It was obvious they had slept together.

"If word gets out..." Roy said to himself. But who would believe him if it did? They were both unmarried. "Dear god, she would burn. And what would I do?" Then there was MacKenzie's unexplained behavior. "How could she know...When did I..." Roy wracked his brain for any instances where Alice's name could have come up in conversation at the hospital or when they had been out at the bar. She must have gotten her hands on that letter. She must have read it. Unless in one of Roy's seemingly dissociative moments he let something slip.

Did it even matter?

***

His 6'5 frame stands intensely in front of a velvet red curtain. It is a deep red, but it's a color turned to black and white once filming begins. A color the audience never seems to see unless on set of a moving picture. The flickers. An art that is beginning to murder live performance.

But that's where he's standing. A deep, inky black stage that thrusts into the audience. An audience of no one, yet there seems to be unconditional applause as the challenge begins. No one watches, but there are souls there all the same.

Roy ties on his blood red mask to face an unknown opponent draped in leather and blue. He smells of tobacco and orange peel. The light shines heavily on the two bandits, silhouetting their figures back on the curtain.

3...2...1...

ACTION.

The opponent draws their foil; the sword is long and thin but can easily penetrate bone. They stalk Roy extensively like a wolf to prey, inching around him repeatedly as he stands motionless in the middle of the stage. The metal glistens ominously in the stage light. Roy quickly reaches to unsheathe his blade but is caught in surprise to find himself unarmed.

IT'S A WRAP.

A thunderous applause follows as Roy begins to feel a sharp zapping pain in his lower back. He tries to scream but to no avail; it's as if his mouth is sewn shut. The pain brings him to his knees as it radiates down the back of his legs and he whimpers in response to the electrical current.

The spotlight turns to two seats in the audience that was once completely empty. A familiar brunette with sea-green eyes stares at the stage and smiles with pity as the leading man next to her begins to clap. They grin and slowly applaud together. Roy stares back in disbelief, unable to process their reactions as his blood drips onto the stage.

IT'S...A...WRAP...

The other bandit circles Roy again and stops in front of him, surveying the damage. Try as he may, Roy is still immobile, his knees as if glued to the stage, and he slowly drags the blade out of his back before collapsing in exhaustion and agony.

The applause of the two familiar guests cease. Roy's eyes water as he silently pleads for his life but his lips are still shut. The opposing bandit pays no attention and slowly kneels down to Roy's level and caresses his face in their hands as they remove his mask, drying tears with a gloved hand.

WIN THE BATTLE...LOSE THE WAR...

The blue-clad bandit unties their mask and it gracefully falls off the stage.  Roy grimaces in surprise and disgust at the now revealed woman. The feeling in Roy's legs begin to diminish when MacKenzie launches herself on top of him, forcing her tongue through his sealed lips. And as much as he wants her, as much as he craves her body he cannot kick free to run into the house towards the brunette. Roy reaches to grasp said woman in the audience. She smiles a phantom's smile, and the both of them retreat into the darkness.

"I am justly killed with mine own treachery..."

*