Catharsis [Novel]

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

            Quickly re-scaling the brick wall - which had been my perch mere moments before - I return to my second floor vantage point.  After spending a few moments moving horizontally along the wall, I find a darkened window (one of the few not boarded up) set in the failing bricks of the rundown house.  Pulling my hand back to punch through the glass so that I can shimmy inside, an idea hits me and halts my swing.  I'm invading a house full of drug dealers and random miscreants, not a CIA safe house.  What are the chances they even bothered to lock the second-floor window of a possibly abandoned room in a rundown slum house?  Not likely, is my guess.

            Resting my weight into my toes and using the pinched grip of my right hand for balance, I reach out and push gently on the windowsill to see if it will budge. It does!

            With an ear-splitting shriek (Whoops!  Maybe a smashed pane of glass would have been quieter after all.), the window makes its way up as I apply steady pressure.

            "Way to go Ms. Sneakypants,” I say as the sound echoes around me in the thick air.  "I believe we just sacrificed that whole 'element of surprise' thing I've heard so much about."

            Adjusting my grip on the window to pull myself in, a delicious wave of the most appetizing scent wafts out and settles around my face.  It's the smell of whatever brought me here.  My desire to have it washes over me and weakens my hold on both the window and the wall.  It's tantalizingly close and getting closer.

            "Get a grip," I tell myself as another intoxicating rush of endorphins sends shivers through me and my fingers threaten to relax.  I giggle as the double meaning of what I just said hits me.  "Focus!" I hiss.

            "Who's out there?"  A tentative voice breaks my reverie as it whispers out of the room.  Mr. Goodsmell is just inside the room.  He's mere feet from me now.  Everything in my consciousness tells me I have to get into that room.  Now!

            "I have a gun," he continues shakily.  "I'll shoot you if you come near me."

            Geezus, I think.  What'd this guy do?  Read the “things to say when you’re scared” section of the Clichéd Bad Guy Manual?  What a waste.

            His fear is almost as enticing as whatever his other smell is.  The erratic rabbit-like skitter-thump of his heart betrays his every word.  I can tell he doesn't want to shoot me.  He doesn’t even want to be holding the gun.

            After rejecting a half dozen fun ways to enter the room, I decide to just go with “quick and direct”.  Shifting my handholds so I can slowly move my head until I have a view of the room, I push myself up until I can make eye contact with the scared, deliciously-scented man standing in the room's doorway.  A man who is holding a very large and very intimidating-looking assault rifle (Seriously!  Where do these guys shop?  Scary Looking Guns 'R Us?).

            Intoning my best I'm-just an-innocent-little-girl voice, I pull myself part way into the window and say, "Help me mister.  I'm scared.  It's scary.  Can you help me?  (Yes, I used 'scared' twice in a row.  I was trying to enforce an image.  Forgive me.)"  I don't try to make him do it, yet.  I imagine I could, but I'm not going to do it.  I just use my normal voice to call to him.

            My appearance takes him by surprise; both my sudden arrival through a second-story window, and the fact that I'm not the kind of person he was expecting to see (Check one off for not being the big, burly boy type.  It's about time being a chick paid off in a situation like this...even though I'm pretty sure my actions just punched women's liberation in the proverbial ovaries.).  The conflicting aromas that his body kicks out - surprise, confusion, fear, concern, hunger - disorient me as I continue my climb into the room.

            "It's ok," I continue in my reedy falsetto as I get both feet planted.  "Put the gun down, it's scary."  I pause and then say shyly, "Come over here."  (And here I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I then batted my eyelashes at him.  Yup.  I did that .)

            He doesn't move and he doesn’t drop the gun to the floor, but at least he stops pointing it at me and lets it fall loosely to his side.  It's a compromise I can live with.

            "Who are you, kid?  What were you doing out there?  Are you ok?  Do you know what's going on?"  His questions come fast once he decides to commit to them.  I’m no longer the source of his fear, but a general sense of it continues to surround him (It's still weird how I can feel shifts of that in other people.  That's something I'll have to pay more attention to in the future.).  Confusion and curiosity have become  his primary scents.

            Now that my life doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger, I take a moment to focus on my breathing and see what I can pick up.  Why have I been attracted to this guy?  Why is his smell so intoxicating?

            As much as I try to focus, I can't.  His very existence is too much for me to ignore.  Every time I try to get a sense of who else is in the house, I’m stopped by his smell in front of me.  My head is beginning to ache for one reason: this man.  He's all I can think about.  Well not him exactly, but something about him.  Something very specific about him.  But what?

            Dampness on my hand gets my attention, and I open my eyes to look at it.  My right palm is wet with a clear, warm liquid. 

            "What ta-," I begin and then realize talking has become difficult.  My mouth is full of water. 

Where'd that come from?  I think.  Wait not water, but-

            "Sawiva," I continue, or at least attempt to.  I have a mouth full of drool, and it's spilling out and dripping down my jaw.  How'd that happen?

            Wait.  I was thinking about the guy and his smell and why it was so distracting, and then-

            "-is wrong with you, girl?"  The man's voice suddenly snaps back into focus and shakes me from my distraction.  "What's coming out of your mouth?  Are you spitting?  Oh, that's weird.  Too-"

            With four quick steps, I close the distance between the two of us and smack his chin upwards cutting off his words. 

            "No more talking," I say quietly into his wide, dinner plate eyes.  "you're done," I tell him and fill the words with my desire.  His only reply is to let his eyes roll back into his head and go limp, but his body remains standing in front of me.

            But this close.  I can't think.  The smell of him is too strong.  The hunger reveals itself in me and whispers to me what I was missing.  His blood.  The red life water that flows through him is what called me.  There's something about his blood.

            I do my best to resist what I know is coming next, but my struggles are as weak and feeble as his are against me.  This moment no longer belongs to me.  This moment belongs to something deeper within me.  Something I don't control.

            Something I fear I am beginning to enjoy.