Chapter Text
A New Day, A New Ending
There is a quiet heat that swells in the desert when a new day is dawning. Jack feels it prickling at the back of his neck. There is no mistaking the specific humidity of morning. Still, he squeezes his eyes shut and prays he is wrong, that his old age and the events of the night have left his senses scrambled and misleading. For a few sweltering seconds, the stillness of the air around him convinces him that there is a God and he is forgiving. If Jack has not reached heaven, he has at least reached absolution. He hopes, anyways, that enough of his sins have been forgiven to warrant a new lease on life. I have to have done something right, he pleads with himself and whoever else may be listening in the ether. Please let me have done something right. But on the horizon, a mirage begins to ripple low, navy bleeding into indigo bleeding into a blush that will unforgivingly bleed into daylight.
“Samira, you have to drink now, please. You have to take from me,” he pleads as he unbuttons his shirt and pulls down the fabric by his sleeve to expose his neck completely for her. She doesn’t budge. Blood is strewn across her body, a mix of her vengeance and their combined missteps and what he couldn’t save her from. He was too late. He had caught it too late, the bullet that grazed her. Her breath is shallow as she lays across his lap wheezing. She has never sounded so fragile before. In the seven days he has known her, she has always been the predator. The prey he sees in his lap now is not the being he knows as his companion, but a glimmer of the human she was before all of this. His spirit cracks at the thought of all that’s been stolen from her, and continues to be stolen from her as the essence of her life slowly drips out. He cradles her, lifting her mouth up to his neck. He wants to save her. Saving people used to be all he knew how to do, but that was a lifetime ago. He is not the same man he once was. And she is not man at all, she is something other, something beyond what he is meant to understand. “Please,” he whispers. Samira shakes her head weakly. “No.”
“But the sun-” tears threaten to fall as Jack sees the edges of Samira’s face start to ashen. Dawn is blooming. The day is coming to burn her away.
“It’s okay,” she rasps out, bringing a steady hand to cup his face. “This was always the plan, Jack.”
“But you promised,” he chokes out, “you promised me.”
“I told you not to trust me, Jack.” She nuzzles her face into his neck, and for a moment God grants him the belief she will accept his offering. Only for a moment. “You know,” she wheezes, “I had given up too. I went out into the desert looking for death. I found you instead.” A tortured wail gargles in the back of Jack’s throat as tears blur his vision, and he cannot blink them away fast enough to see her. He needs to see her. He needs to be able to remember her face. He will not allow her to blur into the vague shadow of a memory just because he is not strong enough to face the moment. He forces himself to be strong. “Please, please don’t leave me Samira, please take what you need so we can go home. Let me take you home.” She is clinging desperately to his shirt, fabric bunching in her fist, and it hits him. She is scared. She is scared, and he cannot help her. He longs for the time when he was good at helping, when his hands could fix any problem presented to them. But perhaps that was the fatal mistake he made. She didn’t present him a problem seven days ago; she presented him an offer, and he accepted.
She whispers against him, “watch the sunrise with me, Jack. I haven’t seen one in a decade.” There is no taking back your word once you have given it. He cannot do anything but what she has asked- watch the sunrise with her. “Okay, Samira, okay.” Jack sobs with the ache of a man who knows he has lost, who knows there is no turning back. For the first time since meeting him, Samira allows herself to fold into Jack. She softens, melting into his body as if he was always meant to hold her and this was always the way they were meant to be- tangled up dust and bones. Eyes glistening, he caresses her face in kind, his heart- his world- tearing apart as her face flecks into ashes under his touch. The sky. Yellow.
7 Days Prior:
A Woman Appears in the Night
The desert has a way of playing with your reason. As each day passes by, the unrelenting heat warps reality, twisting your perception of what is true and what is not with each drop of sweat it wrings from your body. Can you trust what you can see? Or is what you are seeing a mirage, an imagining conjured by the fiery spirits trapped in this realm, haunting the ruins of the world that killed them?
There are stories that have been passed down through the generations of how the suffering of our ancestors permeates down the lineage and through our very souls by virtue of the sun. Each ray of light that hits us is a message, a warning, a smiting meant to teach us how to right the wrongs of yesterday. But man, so far, has neglected to learn what the sweltering heat of the desert, the blazing burn of the sun intends for us to learn. The men who settle down out here ignore the signs, convinced that they are meant for more than a life of suffering. For most men, the desert is not a danger, it is a challenge.
Jack Abbot is not like most men. Where the average man who lives out here believes himself to be a force to be reckoned with, Jack Abbot believes himself to be a man who has nothing left to offer. If the others who live out here wake up each day to prove they are tough, to prove they can take on what the desert has to offer, Jack Abbot wakes up each day to offer himself over to whatever forces will take him.
He is not out here to make a life.
He is out here to end his.
Men seek out what they think they deserve- love, riches, fame, power. Any man who has ever been in pursuit of an object or ideal has been hunting for what they feel is their rightful claim. But Jack Abbot is not a man who feels he deserves anything; he is not a man who is compelled to hunt. In a sense, Jack Abbot is not even a man anymore, he is an animal leaving himself out in the open, in the wild for whatever daring predator will take him. You see, sometimes when a man has reached the precipice of emptiness he cannot be brought back from the ledge. So he stands and waits with baited breath for someone to push him over. He is not seeking anything, rather he is selfishly hoping someone is seeking to end him. If fellow man will grant him no such luck, then perhaps mother nature will. After all, the one thing all men know to be true is this-
The desert is unforgiving.
So too are the people who choose to occupy it. Jack Abbot is most unforgiving of himself, the failures of his past effectively killing his future but not him. It is his biggest regret that he continues to live in the wake of the lives he could not save. Every day the sun beats down upon him, he curses under his breath, brows furrowing in frustration at how the sun refuses to lash into him harder. Every minute the heat suffocates him, he chokes on his own anger at how the dry, heavy beams refuse to wring his neck harder until there is no more air to breathe.
Jack Abbot wakes up every day against his will, toils away outside to force nature’s hand, begrudgingly goes back in when the sun sets and he is still here. He goes to bed each night wishing that if the day will not take him then maybe the night will. There are whispers in the wind, faint voices that echo off of the soul, that warn of what lurks in the shadows of the pitch-black blue that stretches for miles and miles into nowhere. He is a man who knows how to listen, leaving his doors open to whatever will come his way. Most nights, he dreams of being taken in a bout of violent delight, a fitting end in his mind for a man who hasn’t earned salvation. Every so often though a different dream seeds itself in the pulse of his neck, and its roots threaten to steal his breath in such a kind way that he submits without fight every time.
A barefoot woman in white is in his doorway. Her dress billows around her like gossamer clouds evaporating and coalescing in an endless cycle, as if it refuses to take solid form. Her hair follows suit around her head, obscuring her face from him but he doesn’t need to see her to know her. He would know her from the gentle pitter patter of her step, the firm way her hand curls around the doorframe as she watches him, the insistent lingering of her form in the doorway as she forces him to wait for her. Slowly, she floats towards his bed, and as she approaches his hand stretches out towards her. She does not reach for him though, in fact she seldom if ever actually reaches him. Before he can touch her, she dissipates into the splattering of moonlight that seeps through the curtains. She becomes specks of light that won’t deign to touch him.
The nights prove to be as cruel as the days. And still he beckons what forces he can to find him and tear him away from this world. Years have passed in this way.
They say that if the desert does not take you, it warps you. Like the way heat can bend a piece of metal, so too can heat bend a soul until the person you see in the mirror is not you, but a variation, a twisted configuration that is a testament to all that is unholy in our world.
When the will of nature roasts you, even the most sane of men will go crazy out here. For there is no man that can withstand the warping, the smiting, the suffocation.
This is what Jack Abbot believes has happened to him when he sees a shadow approaching from the distance right after the sun has set. It has been six years since his wife died. It has been six years since another person has stepped foot in his domain. But on the horizon, there is no mistaking that there is a figure walking towards him. Or so he thinks. He cannot be sure. It’s the first lesson he learned out here- question everything.
Keeping his eye on the blur, he walks across his porch and sits himself in the rocking chair. It is his wife’s rocking chair. She used to love sitting out here and watching him work. He has not touched her chair since before she died, but he is so excited at the prospect of his insanity that he cannot help himself. He eagerly sinks into her chair, believing that he has finally done it. He has offered himself to the desert, and she has agreed to take him away and deliver him unto the next life where Laura is waiting.
But the blur fades as quickly as it appeared. Just as he feels his eyes grow heavy, ready to close and never open again, the figure evaporates into the night. Jack feels an uneasiness wash over himself as his eyes burst open and he leans forward, scanning the horizon for the shadow he was sure was here to end him. He stays outside, rocking back and forth and waiting. No one appears. He is not sure how long he stays outside. Time is not a construct that is of concern to him. The only time that matters to Jack is the end that he’s been praying for. Until that end comes, the rest is inconsequential.
He falls asleep. At least, he thinks he does. It’s hard to say definitively. What is real and what is imagined becomes harder to discern when the heat of the day ices into the freeze of the night. When he opens his eyes, it is pitch black outside. That is of no concern to him. What is of concern is that there is a face hovering just inches above his, coal black eyes with a red glint gleaming at him; and he does not feel fear. He should- the face is leering at him the way he’s seen the wolves at night leer at the rabbits. The wolves are hunters. The face in front of him belongs to a hunter. He should be paralyzed at the realization that this is the end of the line for him.
But this is what Jack has been asking the desert for. To send somebody to take him away. Now somebody is here, wanting to prey upon, waiting to make a meal of him and suck the life out of him. It is all he has ever wanted. The red glint in their eyes seems to be glowing, and there are teeth poking out of their mouth like… fangs. For most men, the being in front of him would be that of a demon. Jack Abbot is not most men. The being in front of him is an angel, come to guide him onward. He finds himself reaching a hand out to touch the face, wanting to confirm that this is not another delusion. He cannot afford another heartbreak caused by disappointment- it would be a death too kind for himself. The shadow’s face is ice to the touch, but this is not what catches Jack’s attention. What catches Jack’s attention is the way the coal black eyes bulge at his touch in surprise. And suddenly, the shadow is a woman standing in front of him. She is curtained by long, heavy, black curls that fall out from under an old, beat up, men’s cowboy hat. Her face is framed by an elegant jawline. Her lips are a perfect cupid’s bow. In the bask of the stardust she looks like a goddess, like an ephemeral being that could only be conjured through a heat-induced hallucination. He can feel her, though. She cannot be a dream. He is not capable of imagining anyone so illustrious as her.
“Are you… are you real?” Jack whispers as he caresses her face.
The woman tilts her head into his hand, and asks in kind, “are you?”
The Bandit
You can only heed the warnings of the ancestors baked into your skin through the desert heat if you are still tied to them. Even then, most men walk through life oblivious to the calls from beyond. For many beings, what has passed has passed; all that matters is what lies ahead. It is the privilege of being whole- you never consider what it is you could be missing.
For some creatures in the desert though, the voices of their lineage are a screeching static that scrapes at the core of what remains of their being. They know there are people waiting for them, but they cannot reach out to them. They know that there is a part of them that has been wronged, that will never be righted. Sometimes, the desert fractures a soul in such a way as to leave it shattered in a million tiny pieces, caged within a body that is not its own anymore. And when this happens, when a soul is so desecrated that even the body is no longer a holy land, a sickness festers.
There is more than one way to lose yourself out here.
Michael Robinavitch was not one of the lost souls of the desert. He was a trapped soul, an imprisoned spirit hellbent on making the world suffer for the consequences of his own actions. He was an insatiable animal, hungry for the lives he felt he was owed to feed the curse he had brought upon himself through his own dastardly deeds. He was a man once. He had a heart once. Well. He had something that beat like a heart, but it did not compel him to be a better man. In fairness, when has a heart ever compelled a person to be better? Michael Robinavitch had never been a good man. But he had been an honest one. He had never pretended to be something he wasn’t.
When he had the gift of life, he had found pleasure in disseminating death on a whim. Survival was a game he forced those who crossed his path to play, taking a twisted rapture in forcing those he stole from to their knees to pray for a mercy he did not intend to deliver. He liked to prove that God was a myth. He liked to prove that he was more powerful than any force you could pray to.
That was before.
Now as a dead man, a harbinger of plague, death was no longer a past time- it was a necessity to his own sustenance. The ending of life had lost its joy for him, and as a result, a wrathful man had become an implacable beast. In truth, the curse had simply transformed this man into his truest self. And though it pained him to be beholden to rules for once in his life- stay out of the sun, drink every drop of red, accept that there is no slumber but otherworldly exile waiting for a demon- he had found his condition to be ideal. He liked the hunger. He liked the needing. He liked the way he could inflict his victims with a paralyzing venom that forced them to stay with him longer as he played with his food.
Mostly, he liked that he did not have to play God anymore- he was one now.
He and his gang rode from town to town under the cover of midnight, terrorizing every citizen who dared to live in his presence. They moved like ink spilling over a page, indeterminate shadows sprawling through a town and drowning its people in their collective darkness. The Robinavitch Gang was known far and wide, though the tales of their cruelty never adequately prepared the next in line to be brutalized. Perhaps the most evil thing about Michael was his blasphemous way of punishing the living for still having the soul that was ripped from him… or, for possessing the soul he never had in the first place. As he prepared to drink from the necks of the innocent, he would force them to pray with him.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Perhaps the most demented thing about Michael Robinavitch was that he truly believed his consumption of the pure was delivering them from evil. He did not think himself an evil being. Just a being true to his own nature.
And wasn’t honesty a virtue?
“Stop it! God, PLEASE! Stop.”
Michael’s mouth puckers in disgust as he brutally stabs his boot into the gut of the man bound and on his knees. It was the men who begged that he found to be the most pathetic of God’s creatures. Michael had not begged for mercy. Michael had not pleaded for forgiveness. When it came time to collect on his soul, he had raised his head high and accepted his fate. One might even argue that he had welcomed it. As such, he had no tolerance for weak constitutions.
He looks over at Langdon cradling the man’s wife in his arms, her head limp and hanging, her eyes dilated and petrified. She cannot move. She cannot speak. All she can do is watch her husband watching her. It’s exactly what Michael feels they deserve- to watch helplessly. That was life anyways, wasn’t it? Watching the ruining of everything you once held dear.
Langdon simpers at the husband, keeping his eyes on the man as he mockingly asks Michael, “should I stop, boss?”
“I don’t think she wants you to,” Garcia coos from across the room, her face emerging from the neck of her own victim. Langdon brings the wife’s right arm up to his mouth, flossing it back and forth across his tongue, eyebrows waggling at the sniveling husband. He forcefully bites down into her arm, her humerus snapping with the most nauseating crunch under the pressure of his fangs. “Pleaaaaasssseeee,” the husband howls, snot, tears, and spit splattering across his face as he tries to shuffle forward on his knees to reach his wife, his body falling over. Michael and his gang snigger as they allow the man to pitifully worm his way on his stomach to her. Langdon savagely yanks at the limb, muscle and skin and fiber tearing and crackling as the arm is torn from its body, much to the husband’s horror and the gang’s euphoric cheers. Langdon picks up the severed limb and holds it above his head, letting blood and chunks of tissue and ligament messily drop into his mouth before chewing at the arm like a turkey leg on Thanksgiving. What he is grateful for is someone else’s misery. The wife’s eyes glaze over, tears forming but not falling as she tries to stay with her husband. The husband’s squawking, his choking on his tears, his dread the soundtrack to his wife’s final moments.
She is the one thing he is supposed to protect, and the one thing he has certainly failed at.
Michael smiles at the irony of it all- humans always thought they were in control, that they called the shots, that if they followed a given path it would lead them to salvation. Humans were stupid. Humans only saw what they wanted to see. Their willful ignorance of the way the world actually worked was what led to their demise every time. Michael saw it as his holy mission, nay, his righteous duty, to show people how dishonestly they were living.
“Do you really believe you can save her right now?” Michael asks as he stomps on the man’s back. Blood spatters out from the man’s mouth upon impact as he wails. Michael crouches down to be level with the man’s face, sneering, “Honestly, do you believe you stand a chance?”
The man gurgles on his blood, choking out through the clots, “yes.” Langdon waves at the husband with the remains of the wife’s severed arm. “Awww, “yes”,” Langdon teases.
“See, I think you’re lying,” Michael chides, “I think this is just a show you’re putting on for her so that she thinks you’re a good man. Are you? A good man?”
“Yes,” the man strains. Michael growls, pulling the man up by his hair harshly and spewing into his ear, “no, you’re not. Goodness isn’t real. There’s only those who tell the truth and those who lie. You’re not telling the truth right now.”
Langdon shakes his head and the wife’s head, manipulating her body like she’s a doll. The wife’s eyes droop heavily, her life draining as quickly now as the blood spurting from her wound. “Did you hear that? Your husband is a liar. You know what God thinks of liars, don’t you?” Langdon slaps the wife’s face around, “no, no. It’s not time to go to sleep yet. You have to watch.” He furiously grabs her by her chin and turns her to look at her husband in Michael’s hands. Her complexion is waning. They’ve kept her alive for too long, the venom has lost its hold and pain- real, excruciating pain from being torn apart- is rooting itself in every nerve she can still feel through.
“Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,” Michael announces grandly as he effortlessly picks the husband up by the scruff of his neck. He dangles the husband’s body in front of the wife. “But those who act faithfully are his delight!” His voice booms. He can feel the venom starting to drip in his mouth, anticipation building as he smells the man’s horror at what is about to occur. It was funny- no human understood what Michael was, but they all seemed to understand perfectly what he was capable of and what he intended to do when he throttled their bodies around as he was doing to the husband now. Michael bares his fangs, eyes gleaming ruby red as he proclaims, “If you aren’t going to live honestly, you should die honestly. Your death will be the faithful act that makes you God’s delight!”
Michael ravages the husband’s neck, ripping off chunks of skin and making blood rain in a spectacular flood over the wife dying helplessly in Langdon’s lap. Langdon and Garcia cackle at the spectacle, and Langdon uses his claws to scratch open the wife’s neck in kind. Having feasted upon a family in the next house over, no member of the Robinavitch Gang required any more sustenance. What they were doing here was strictly for fun. These violent ends were violent delights for the already gone.
Only.
Only, as Michael watches blood splatter onto every available surface, he does not feel like he is having fun. He feels bored, trapped in a new way. He tears at where the husband’s neck meets the shoulder until the body jaggedly splits in two, desperate to find some kind of joy but he feels nothing. He feels empty as he tosses the pieces of dead carcass to the ground. As he looks at the waste they have laid to this abode, he feels sickeningly human- without purpose, and without reason. He storms to the door, tersely uttering, “Let’s go. We’re done here.”
Langdon and Garcia follow him wordlessly. They know better than to question him when he gets into a mood. Lately, the mood swings have been more frequent, more aggressive, his disposition no longer focused but hazy. He is in a haze, unable to find his way forward.
There were myths, of course, legends of terrifying creatures of the night that exsanguinated their victims and left piles of bloodless bodies in their wake. Nobody heeded the stories, and if they did it simply did not matter once they came face to face with the dark forces that haunted every tall tale of what you could encounter out here. The desert is no place for a sane man, for the souls of innocents who easily bend to the will of the wicked under the pretense of kindness. Every person that Michael came across and cleansed had invited him and his gang into their homes of their own volition, neighborly folks who knew without a doubt- from the chill that rolled off of the Robinavitch Gang, from the tar black of their eyes, the orbs of red that glowed deviously as they requested entry- that Michael was bad news, but who invited him in with open arms nonetheless. They made it easy. They made it too easy, and every time Michael crossed the threshold into their domains, he could feel himself quaking with anger that he was a god among worthless creatures who yielded when they should have been fighting instead. A sane man knows when they have no chance. The worthless creatures knew they had no chance when they opened the door to see Michael, and so they did what any lowly being would do in the presence of guaranteed demise- they bent the knee. There was no work involved in his crusade, and it left him with a thirst that could never be quenched.
As the Robinavitch Gang mounts their horses and sets off before the sun can get them, a chilling revelation sharply freezes over Michael’s bones. He misses being a worthless creature himself.
The Widower
“Why are you being so kind to me?” The angel asks as her eyes follow him curiously around his home. He takes his time bringing her water from the kitchen, basking in her attention with every slow step he makes towards her. She is sitting on his couch, the soft glow of the candles he’s lit allowing him to better study her.
He shrugs, “wouldn’t be right to leave you all alone out there. There’s a lot of dangerous game that come through at night.”
“Danger is subjective, don’t you think? What’s dangerous to you isn’t necessarily dangerous to me.”
“Are you saying you would’ve been alright if I had let you go?”
“I’m saying you might not be alright for letting me stay.”
He is keenly aware that the harshness of her gaze should terrify him- she is not watching him as a woman watches a man. No. Her attention is closer to the way a wolf eyes a rabbit. Her eyes are leering, her body rigid like a spring waiting to snap. She is stalking him. She is on the prowl, ready to attack him if he slips up.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m not something you should trust, Jack.”
Her intensity does not terrify him, though. It excites him. His name on her lips sends a shiver down his spine, as does her curious turn of phrase.
“Someone.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re not someone I can trust.”
She bitterly grimaces, a twinkle of red dancing across her eyes. “I chose my words correctly. Humanity is not subjective.”
He offers her the glass of water, extending the glass towards her. Her nose twitches as she retracts from him, shaking her head. “No thank you.”
Jack’s lips pucker in confusion. From the way the leather of her jacket is weatherworn, and the amount of sand that has collected along the brim of her hat he knows that she has been out in the desert for a significant amount of time. Having found no canteen on her, and no other bits of luggage to suggest that she has been sustaining herself, she should be severely dehydrated. She shouldn’t just want water, she should need it.
“A stronger drink, then? There is ale somewhere in-”
“I can’t drink. Not like you do.”
“But the heat, the sun… you need to recover.”
“Do I look like I’m in need of recovery?”
He takes a good look at her. Shadows flicker across the room, the flame of the candles creating unruly shapes on the walls around them. In a sense, she is one of those unruly shapes, her outline buzzing, her facade fading in and out of the darkness. She is an inversion of the woman he sometimes dreams about, a faceless figure waiting for him to react. When he manages to get her shape to focus clearly, he is startled to see that she is perfect. Her complexion is glowing. Her skin is smooth, no burns, no cracks. Her lips are not even so much as chapped. In truth, she does not look like someone who has ever spent time in the desert.
He stutters. “N-no. You don’t. How-?”
“You shouldn’t ask questions you wouldn’t like the answers to.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t like the answer?”
“No human ever does.”
Human. His face splits into a manic smile. So, it’s happening, he thinks. It’s finally happening.
“Does that include yourself?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
The red of her eyes bursts menacingly, like a warning sign yelling at him to stop. It only spurs him on. One wrong move and she will attack him. He knows this. He knows this, and he wants this. He keeps pushing. “Are you one of the humans who doesn’t like the answer?”
Her mouth turns downward into a grimace. “You really are not alright, are you?”
“Alright is subjective too, is it not?”
She shakes her head. “No. It’s not. You clearly have a problem.”
“And what would that be?” She is close to breaking. He can see it in the way she is starting to lean forward, jaw tightly clenched, fists closing and flexing repeatedly like she’s struggling to maintain control of herself. Her voice is terse as she admonishes, “You’re too eager to be acquainted with your next life.”
“How do you know that?”
“Your blood is practically wailing for somebody to release it from you.”
“You can hear my blood?”
“I can smell it. It smells desperate,” she states matter of factly. She isn’t judging him, but she is assessing him, a slight but important distinction in his mind. Her grace is becoming of the kind of being he is assuming she is. Still, despite her measured approach, her eyes level a quiet accusation as she adds, “You smell foolishly desperate for an end to things.”
“Is it my desperation or my foolishness that upsets you so much?”
“It’s your desolation that saddens me. You have no idea the gift you have, Jack.”
He scoffs, turning his gaze away from her. “Life isn’t always a gift, Samira. For some people, it’s a curse to wake up. Someone as young as you wouldn’t understand that. But you will, one day.”
He feels a gust of sharp wind blow towards him, and there she is- right in front of him, forcing him to look at her. She shouldn’t be able to move so quickly. She shouldn’t be able to go without water. She should scare him. But she doesn’t. The red in her eyes mellows, her voice a woeful timber as she tells him, “I do understand, Jack. Misfortune knows no age, only the unlucky.”
He has invited death into his home, convinced if he treats her kindly he will pass her test and be granted the eternal slumber he came out here to fall into.
“For me, it’s a curse to never go to sleep.”
“You don’t sleep?”
“I can’t. There is no rest that can find me.”
He had been working under the assumption that death was the luckiest of us all. To be the decider of the end, to know when a thing was truly over was, in his mind, an unparalleled position of privilege. But as he listens to Samira, he comes to realize that he is wrong.
“Do you want it to find you?”
“More than anything. But it can’t. It never will. Not until the work is done.”
There is no being in this world that is safe from the harsh reality of living. Her face contorts into an anguish that he did not think ethereal beings were capable of, and it incites a wrath within him. His suffering has been a prison of his own making. But hers? He refuses to believe that such a heavenly being as herself could ever have done anything to warrant the torture she is being subjected to. More than anything, echoes in his chest. More than anything, he wishes to rest too.
“What work needs to be done?”
As he looks at her, he sees a glimmer of promise. If he cannot save himself- and he does not want to- he can try to save her. He used to be good at that, once.
Six Years Ago
Laura wraps herself around Jack’s back, her arms slinking around his chest and fiddling with the buttons of his shirt as he fastens his belt. She kisses his neck, murmuring, “do you really have to go?” In the moment, he takes her lips for granted, shirking her off as he reaches for the badge on the dresser. When he plays this memory over in the years to come, he will hear his voice screaming in his mind what an idiot he is, what a cruel son of a bitch he is for being so dismissive of the one person he ever claimed to love.
“You know I do,” he replies as he pins the star to his shirt. He reaches for his gun, holstering it as he turns to look at his wife with a wink. “Who else is gonna protect you?”
She bites her bottom lip, crossing her arms disapprovingly. “I hate that you think everything is a joke.”
He shakes his head, furrowing his brows at her, his voice more terse than he intends for it to be, “I hate that you don’t respect my job.”
“Is that what you think my problem is? That I don’t respect you? Jack. You don’t respect you. You keep putting your life on the line like there’s nothing to lose.”
“What is there to lose, Laura? What do I have that’s so special that I could lose? Cause last I checked, I already lost everything there was to lose.”
She looks at him stunned, like he’s slapped her across the face. Is she more hurt that he would throw their dead baby in her face, or that he would suggest in the same breath that she was not something he was worried about losing? He cannot tell. When he comes back to this moment in his mind, he cannot figure out what hurts her so much. All he can figure out is he is the kind of man who would hurt the woman he loves to win an argument. And that’s all he needs to know that he is not a good man. He is a man deserving of any punishment the desert sees fit to hand him.
“Jack,” her voice is thick, her hands curling into fists at her side. “Please. Please. Stay. You don’t have to be this man. You don’t have to do this.”
“We’ve been over this, it’s my job,” he grunts, walking out of their bedroom and towards the front door. She quietly pleads, following behind him, “but it doesn’t have to be. Not anymore. You could let someone else-”
“No one else is equipped to protect our town, Laura. You know that. You saw what it was like before we came here.”
“And I see how it is now, Jack… they don’t need you anymore. You don’t have to keep giving yourself to people who don’t need you. Jack…” She’s reaching out for him, her hand just barely touching his shoulder, but she cannot stop him. He has always been an object incapable of bowing to any force.
He doesn’t look back at her. When he plays this memory over in the hours after he finds her dead body strewn across their bedroom floor, he will relentlessly ask himself why he did not look at her. The idea of her face will haunt his dreams, but he will never see her face in full again. He did not look. So he does not get to see her, not even in memories, not even in dreams.
It is justice delivered.
His last day on the job goes much like any other. He takes care of the drunks who start too early at the saloon, knocking out the rowdy fellows who grumble, and escorting the rowdiest of the fellows to the holding cell. He patrols the market, hands gripping at his belt as he struts up and down the stalls looking for trouble. That was Jack’s job in a nutshell. Looking for trouble. He was the best at it. But was he the best at it because he was vigilant, or because he was his own kind of trouble attracting the worst of men? He had managed to build a nice life for himself, a good life. But that did not make him a good man. He believed earnestly there was a darkness within him, and that was why he was able to keep the peace in this town that once was a devil’s playground. He had whipped them into shape because he was a kind of devil himself, come to reign in the demons who had tried to escape from under his thumb.
After five years here, there was hardly any discord left to soothe. When he walked the length of the town in silence, hearing nothing but the idle chatter of neighbors and the laughter of children, he heard Laura’s voice in his head. He thought she was nagging. “Stay home, please. Luck runs out eventually, don’t let it run out on us in this way.” He would not realize until later she was begging.
His last day on the job, he took the long way home, winding through the mountains instead of riding straight home. The routine of waking up, going to work, and coming home had lulled him into a monotonous way of living that made him feel as though he had walked straight into an early grave. He needed excitement. He wanted to tempt fate, wanted to find the kind of trouble he had eradicated from the town. He needed to feel like he was still alive. Funny- he had once been a man who craved life.
As he rode the long way home, dusk settled over the land. He and Laura had decided to try and make a home away from the bustle of the town. After Dottie had died, he could not stand the stares, the whispers, the pity. Laura could not stand, period. She had holed up in their bedroom and had refused to leave their bed, spending each day curled up on her side and staring out into an abyss of nothing that she claimed held Dottie, that she claimed was waiting to suck her up and reunite her with their daughter. It stung- the way Laura said with such conviction that their daughter was waiting on the other side, but only for her. Laura never included Jack’s name when she told him she heard a calling she needed to answer. Perhaps that was why he was so comfortable being so cruel to her in her lowest moments. She had monopolized the grief of their tragedy, and in doing so had indirectly told him that she did not care if she lost him. She had already lost the thing that mattered. So he internalized her truth, and made it his own.
He can tell there is something wrong before he dismounts from his horse. He’s quick to note the way their front door is open, the scattered hoof and footprints in the sand leading up to their porch, the shattered glass of the window. Dry. Before he learns of the desert’s heat, he intimately learns of the desert’s way of choking you, of stripping your insides of their moisture and leaving you dry and hacking and wrung out. He runs inside, hand pulling his gun haphazardly from his holster as he enters his home. “Laura!” He calls out, and the second her name leaves his lips he feels a stabbing pain in his bowels that tells him she will not answer. He knows this truth in his soul before his eyes can confirm it for his mind. She is gone. He still had something to lose.
He runs around their home, checking every room, every corner for the villain, for the victim. When he gets to their bedroom, he can smell the rot before he enters. He steps in, eyes landing immediately on the ugly brown pool of blood Laura’s body is on top of. There is the victim. He catches a glimpse of himself in the small mirror atop their dresser as he steps towards her. There is the villain. He hurries forward to kneel before her, to pull her body close to his, but she is cold. She is ice. She is long gone from this world. Her hair is disheveled, a tumbleweed, blood-stained garden strangling her face. He can’t see her face. This is when time stops for Jack, when minutes and days cease to matter. He was too late. Way too late. And he will never catch up with the fates.
He buries his wife with his daughter, grimacing as he shovels the dirt over her grave. She was right. Laura was right about it all. He should not have acted as though he did not have anything to lose. And their daughter was indeed only waiting for Laura, had been calling so strongly for her mother that she took her from Jack before he had a chance to make things right, to try again, to find the life that Laura had been asking him to.
When he finishes burying Laura, he drops to his knees atop her grave, head thrown back. He is howling. He is wailing. He is opening his mouth up wide as an offering, begging the desert to fill his lungs with her sand and leave him breathless, leave him a mummy filled with his own regret and wrapped in a hurt of his own doing. It is the first time he begs for death to come for him. But death does not want him.
Death only wants who he loves.
Hours turn to days, Jack still on his knees. In prayer, in offering? Both. Neither. He is simply an object that cannot bend to any force. Jack Abbot pays the penance of his sins with the flesh and spit and blood of his body, but it does not matter because no price he pays buys him the ending he is seeking. Starved, dehydrated, and burned. Days turn to weeks. He does not go back to work. He does not look for trouble anymore. He does not do anything but sit and wait and try to hear the call of his daughter, try to see the face of his wife.
But they have abandoned him.
And it is what he believes he deserves.
He’s a useless man now. He knows that he is no good to anyone, that there is no possible way that he could be of real help to her. Still. When he looks at her he cannot help but feel compelled to try. If there was ever a being to be good for, it’s her. Her countenance becomes morose as she retreats from him, fading back onto the couch on the other side of the room. “My burdens are my own, Jack. You owe me nothing.”
“It’s not about owing, it’s about what’s right. Let me do what’s right for you. Please.”
She glares. “No.”
“You don’t want my help?”
“I don’t want to be in your debt.”
“I’m not a greedy man, Samira. I won’t ask for much.”
“No, you’ll just ask me to do the one thing you don’t want to do yourself.”
“I don’t deserve my own mercy.”
“You don’t deserve my punishment either.”
“You can’t know that, Samira.”
She gives him a slight smile. “I know more than you think. I can smell it in your blood.”
She blinks once at him, like a signal. It’s okay. You’re okay. Jack’s lips pucker to the right as he contemplates the creature in front of him. Even death is subject to the whims of existence. She does not get to make her own rules, she is forced to follow the ones that guide everyone else. She will not take what is not hers. He wonders if that is really because she is a righteous being, or if it is because she’s been stolen from before and knows the burden of being the one left behind.
It’s strange. Jack Abbot had been waiting for the past six years to meet death, and he had expected her kindness to be the shredding of his eternal spirit. He had not expected her kindness to be forgiveness. That’s what he sees in Samira’s eyes, beyond the coal and the red and the almost hypnotic shimmer meant to destabilize prey. Forgiveness. That’s what compels him to help her, even though he cannot help himself. She gets up and makes for the door. When her hand touches the handle, he exclaims, “Wait!”
She pauses. She does not have to pause. She could disappear in a literal blink. She doesn’t, though. She is benevolent in the way he assumed death would be. She turns to face him.
“Would you like to stay the night?” He asks. “I have a spare room.”
“I can handle myself out there.” She’s swaying back and forth on her heels in a girlish way, as though she is a woman and he is a man and his invitation is making her bashful. But she is not a woman. In her own words, she is not even human. She is something.
“I’m saying you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. You could stay here, and not have to handle anything.”
“It’s not safe-”
“I’m harmless, real-”
“For you. It’s not safe for you.” She takes a step towards him, admonishing, “you shouldn’t let just anyone into your home, Jack. You never know what you stand to lose until you lose it.”
You keep putting your life on the line like there’s nothing to lose. He has not been able to hear Laura’s voice so clearly since the day that she died. Her words ring through his head, mellifluously floating in one ear and out the other in a circle as he stares at Samira in wonder. She is of heaven. Death is divine in its own right, and if every ending creates a new beginning then death cannot be a creation of hell. Like life, it is too precious a gift to have come from anywhere other than the hands of a benevolent God.
He clears his throat. “I… I know all too well about losing, Samira. I know what’s at stake here.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. You know, and you’re gambling and hoping to lose.”
“Would you stay if I told you I was hoping to win?”
She laughs, an unexpectedly melodious sound that creates a surprising longing in Jack. Her fangs pop out, and her eyes widen in horror as she quickly moves her hands to cover her face and hide from him. He beams at her, her fangs not a terrifying reality of her existence but a beautiful piece of evidence that there are things in this world beyond his understanding, that he is not crazy- somehow, despite all of his wrongdoings, he is blessed. Because she is here. She lowers her hand, allowing herself to be seen for a moment. Jack’s mind works overtime to commit her to memory- he does not intend to spend what remains of his miserable existence haunted by another face he cannot remember.
Her eyes twinkle as she replies, “Well… I don’t think you’re being entirely truthful, but…”
“But?”
“You’re also not entirely lying. There is something almost like honesty singing in your blood right now.”
“So… you’ll stay?”
She nods. “I’ll stay. You’ll just need to make some… adjustments, so that it’s safe.”
“For me?”
“And for me. I can’t… the sun. It’s dangerous to me.”
“Thought you said there was nothing dangerous but you?”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I decided to trust you.”
“So, you can trust me, but I can’t trust you, do I have that right?”
“Exactly right, Jack.”
He swallows at her words. He doesn’t deserve them. If she can smell his truth, she can smell his shame. She should smell that he is no good.
“Okay. The sun is dangerous to you?”
“It will burn me to ash.”
She cannot get caught in the daylight. She is a creature of the night. There were myths, of course, legends of terrifying creatures of the night that exsanguinated their victims and left piles of bloodless bodies in their wake. As Jack takes in what Samira is telling him, the tips of her fangs grazing at her bottom lip, the red of her eyes, it does briefly cross his mind that she is the myth he is meant to be afraid of. Jack Abbot, though, is what he has always been- an immovable object. He has made up his mind about Samira. It will not be changed.
“I’ll go board up the window in the room, then. Anything else?”
“I umm… I need to eat.” She looks embarrassed, and it only endears her further to Jack. He arches an eyebrow at her, a teasing he didn’t know he was still capable of taking over his voice as he asks, “and what is it you need to eat that has you looking like that?”
She shakes her head, retracting. “You know what, it’s probably best if I take care of that part myself. I’ll just hunt when you’re asleep.”
“I’m sorry to say I don’t really sleep much. It’s too quiet at night. Makes me restless.”
“I know the feeling.”
They stand staring at each other. For how long, neither could say. Time ceased being relevant to either of them eons ago. Samira moves first. “The sun will be up shortly.”
He nods, and gets to work, turning the guest room into the mausoleum he has been dreaming of waking up in. Once they’ve confirmed that no sunlight can enter, they part ways. They do not wish each other a goodnight- morning is practically here, and even if it wasn’t, a “goodnight” was meant for those who could have one. It seems cruel to them both to remind the other of what they do not have. No. They do not wish each other goodnight. Just a glance, a slow blink of Samira’s eyes. I trust you. Prove me right.
Jack nods in response. I’ll try.
The Daughter
Sleep was made a stranger to Samira ten years ago. Since transforming into a creature beyond her own understanding, the closing of her eyes has become a perfunctory task, a way to maintain a connection to a past that is no longer a thing to call her own. Sleep is a game of make-believe she plays to pretend that she is still a person, a human with a soul that stands a chance to be reunited with the ones who have been stolen from her.
Her inability to rest is the facet of her curse that she has had the hardest time accepting. The power to dream, to disappear into a perfect wasteland of your own concocting had been stripped away from her alongside her father and her future. Where others could retreat into the recesses of their mind, could squeeze their eyes shut and slip into a sort of fugue state that allowed them to forget and rewrite and avoid the details of their lives that were difficult to accept, Samira was forced to relive all that she could not dream away.
Having spent the past decade wandering the desert plains, searching for what she called justice, she had been thoroughly warped by the heat of the day, effectively eroded by the sand, perfectly molded by the freeze of the night. She is a testament to the way the desert destroyed a being, but unlike the many men who had traveled the path before her, she is not capable of heeding what her own ancestors wanted to warn her of. She is blocked from receiving their words, their comfort, their guidance. She is completely on her own. Most days, she is accepting of her fate. She had meant what she had said to Jack- her burdens are her own to carry. But some days, very few, she finds it difficult to understand why she has been chosen to walk the path she is stuck on by herself. Some days, she finds herself asking God why he has chosen her to suffer, and if she is still considered a creature worthy of his love and forgiveness in her current condition.
As she lies on the bed in the protective darkness Jack has constructed for her, she sees him before her. The monster. Every time she seeks out rest, she finds him instead waiting for her. He looks at her lecherously, daring her to move. Most times, she doesn’t. Too paralyzed by the fear of a little girl, she typically finds herself powerless to the whims of her hallucinations. At least, she thinks they are hallucinations. She has spent too much time alone to know what is real and what is a figment of her imagination. Sometimes when the moon rises in the sky and she does her own version of waking up and starting a new day, she finds marks on herself- bites, scratches, would-be bruises if she had the kind of vessels that could be properly damaged and leak blood that purpled into a horrifying, welcomed reminder of what her body had survived- and she has to ask herself if he was here, if he was playing with her as he played with her father ten years ago, or if she dreamed it. Then she remembers that she cannot dream. She is delirious, a product of an environment that forces one to adapt or die. In a sense, she is dead. But she is still here. So she adapts.
Today is not like most days. In the bewildering comfort of a strange man’s home, Samira is overcome with the drive to fight. When the monster appears before her, she does not feel helpless. She feels ready. She feels like the woman she once imagined she would grow up to be, back when she still had a future to dream about. She sits up, beckoning the beast to meet her at the side of the bed. The towering demon speeds its way over, posturing in front of her menacingly, his claws protracting and his fangs dripping as he looks down at her. His hands clench around her throat, crushing her windpipe, his nails digging into the skin of her neck. He is smiling sadistically, lips spreading wide to reveal the full gore of his mouth to her, the shredded ligaments and fibers of his last victim hanging from his teeth like macabre chandeliers. She pays his antics no mind. Today, she is not to be another of his victims. She reaches out to unbuckle his pants, marveling at how her movements stop his own. She pulls his cock out, the most precious part of a man, and puts it in her mouth. His leering transforms into confusion, which gives way to peace.
Even monsters wish to be treated as men.
Samira knows this because it is all that she wants- to be treated as the human she used to be. She sucks at his hardened length, her hands caressing the underside of his sack, working him over till he is no longer a beast but a boy, a panting child begging for a release. She works him over until the core that is trapped by his curse is revealed to her, and she is invigorated to learn that he is more scared than she is of what comes next. She feels his pleasure building, his throbbing indicating he is near the end, and he is right where she wants him. Tonight, he is the one who will awaken with scars. Right as he begins to spill himself into her mouth, she bares her fangs and chomps down, ripping at the boneless organ until it tears off completely, cum and a dark sludge exploding in her mouth, onto her face. He screams. She laughs. She laughs until he collapses from the loss. She laughs until he is crawling away from her. She laughs until he disappears, until the fluids on her face dry off and his dismembered penis hanging from her mouth fades into oblivion, and she has to ask herself if he was here or if her mind was playing tricks.
She cannot dream. She knows this. But there is some kind of magic in the walls of a room that feels like it was made for her. Without knowing it, Jack has made her a home. And here, in the safety of his protection, her mind is starting to conjure imaginings she should not be capable of. He has made her a person once more.