Grave

12

I was twelve. 

On the verge of semi-adulthood and equal responsibilities that I was not looking forward to. 

When the police arrived two years ago in the dirty motel room where rigor was setting into mother's body (really now, the police could have gotten to the scene faster) and found me meandering around the kitchen trying to reach for an apple, they whisked me up and away. 

Nervous conversations bounced from wall to wall and person to person, not meant for my ears but landing at the misguided destination anyways. They were scared, not of me but for me. They though that this would scar me (It took me a minute to realize they weren't talking about the one mother gave me, but mentally) or that I would be socially impaired for the rest of my life.

So they tested me.

Men with slick backed hair held up card-stock with ink splotches criss-crossing and shadowing across the white plane. It would last for hours or for minutes depending on the answers I gave and if it satisfied their intellectual opinion. 

"Tell me what you see."

His hands were dotted with spots of age, but his eyes were squirming with intelligence. He wasn't dangerous to a normal patient, no Doctor Rand was one of the best and brightest, but if I slipped up even once he would catch the infection that had already spread beneath the cover. 

The image was long and stretched out, seemingly natural in position and a patch work of greys and blacks. Droplets of, presumably, ink spread far beyond the original home.

It was obviously a stab wound with a splatter pattern of arcing blood.

I mulled over it, thinking of a particularly childish and appropriate answer for the question hanging thin in the stuffy air of his office, it was always a puzzle to figure out the right one. But just by chance my eyes slid from the picture to his face and I caught a glimmer, Ah, Mr. Rand. 

You sly fish, you know whats hiding beneath the surface. All you need to do, and you understand it, is fish it out of its hiding place.

It made me giggle.

"Whats so funny, Grave?"

That's the name I told them when the police picked me up at the scene, since mother never bothered calling me anything other than "child" or "girl" I adopted the name the small town endowed me with after the cow incident  (as if they already weren't superstitious enough).

Grave.

The police wanted a last name to so I told them it was "Caedis" and they were either too dull, indifferent or uneducated to realize it was the Latin word for murder.

Ah, but Mr.Rand wasn't dull at all. He was sharp as the knives I use to cut open the pigeons behind the facility, sharp as the tacks I pushed into their wings to pin them down.

"What is it?"

Back in the moment at hand, I looked, actually looked, as my mother did in her last moments and see. Mr.Rand is not like me, he knows what I am but not what I'm capable of, so I put on a charming smile, one of an innocent child and reply.

"Its just that the picture looks like a fish I had one time."

The confusion in his face clears after a split second and he grins as well, sliding the card-stock image to the back of the stack and replacing it with the next.

We play a game of wills that we both know he will inevitably lose, but we play for the sake of the game and its exhilarating.

Him knowing whats underneath.

And me following suit.

------

Clever as the good Doctor Rand was, he was mortal like everyone else.

His old age pulled him to a hospital bed and made oxygen a necessity, as well as an IV. Although he could have been called my adversary in mind games, he was still my teacher in a way.

If I could hide from him, I could hide from anyone.

So, we were a sorry pair to be seen in the pale white of the hospital room, mostly in content silence except for a cough or a sigh. My skinny form casting a vapid shadow across the coarse bed sheets and his age withered hands twisting up in the fabric.

Rose sat on the side table and watched us, she still seemed wary of the man, but excitement lit up her eyes at the prospective danger. 

I drew in a breath and caught Mr.Rand mid cough.

"Rose doesn't like you that much."

His eyebrows stitched and he looked at me in consternation, obviously taken aback at the prompt.

"Who's Rose?"

"Shes sitting right there."

I waved my hand around the general area next to his bed and Rose hissed.

"No one is there Grave."

"I know."

---------

His parting was not grand like mother's (although it would have been funner if it was) and he asked if I could hold his hand. It was a simple gesture and his gnarled finger tips enclosed around my hand. His breathing became labored and his lashes fluttered until he drew in one last breath and asked one final question. 

"Who are you."

I lent close to his ear, just close enough to hear my whisper.

"The playwright."

Confusion yet again bloomed over his features and I elaborated on what I had said.

"..With a nasty habit of killing off main characters."

He then understood, after a moment, why I danced around questions, why I lied to the staff about why I wasn't in my room after dark, why dead birds were always found behind the building at three o' clock sharp and why I was always there to see them find the birds.

Why Harris Millard down the hall from my room never looked me in the eyes, why he had a scar on his arm and why had to be transferred to another ward.

Doctor Rand understood as he passed and the little sparks in his eyes died.

He understood me.

Rose climbed up into my lap and nudged at my hand, so I petted her in long strokes as quiet tears ran down my face.

I cried for the last time.

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