Seeking Twilight Ch. 03

The rallies were not actually held inside the church. They were held outside on the steps and in the street in front. It was necessary due to the shear volume of the crowds. As large as the church was, the crowds were larger, like giant, thick, stationary parades, which was exactly how Taylor liked it.

He liked that people could see the church for miles. He liked that they could hear the cheering and chanting of the crowds for several blocks in every direction. He liked that the entire downtown would, for a whole evening, become a giant parking lot. He reveled in the knowledge that there was hardly a person in town who hadn't at the very least heard of the events or the organization. Tonight was no different, and the reverend was loving every minute of it.

As he waited to start the rally, Taylor peered out at the podium, as well as the crowd beyond it, from just inside the door of the church. He breathed slowly, focusing on what he needed to say. His thoughts were interrupted, however, when he heard a voice behind him say, "Helluva crowd."

Taylor turned around and was greeted by the organization's communications administrator, Winslow Pogue, and his assistant, Janey Lawrence.

"Mistah Pogue," the reverend said, sounding like a school teacher scolding a student, "How many times have I asked you to watch your language when you're in my church?"

"I didn't realize I was supposed to be keeping track," Pogue responded, not waiting for the reverend to respond before continuing, "It's fifteen minutes to start, so we should go over your remarks. I have them here for you."

He turned and looked at Janey, who began shuffling through the three inch stack of file folders she was holding, looking for the papers.

Taylor didn't wait for Janey to find the comments. Instead, he said to Pogue, "Please thank your staff for me, but I already know what I'm going to say."

"Sir," said Pogue, "I really think that you should reconsider that. You're emotional over the loss of your son and I think that you're not thinking clearly. You could say something or do something that might make trouble for the organization."

"You think I could endanger the group by what I say?" the reverend asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Do you think the group is that weak?"

"I think that you're that powerful, sir." Pogue admitted.

"And you think that I would intentionally do anything to damage our abilities?"

"Not intentionally, no sir, but that's--"

"Then there's no problem," the reverend said, cutting him off.

Pogue was stunned by how easily he'd been given the runaround by the Reverend, but he recovered quickly.

"Sir, I-"

"You still think it'd be better if I gave 'em a once over?" the Reverend asked.

"Yes, sir"

"Fine. Let me take a look."

Pogue looked to Janey, who was still shuffling, now furiously, through her papers to find the remarks.

"Is there a problem?" Pogue asked her.

Janey was now frantic. She scrambled through her papers, finding anything and everything except the one paper she needed. Pogue was growing impatient.

He asked, "Can't you find it!?"

"I . . . Uh, I . . . ," was all Janey could squeak out.

"Go back to my office and get the copy off my desk." Pogue ordered

"Sir, I-"

Pogue ordered, "Oh, for Christ's sake, just do it, will you!"

"MISTER POGUE!" shouted Reverend Taylor.

"Ah, shit." Pogue said, under his breath.

"Mister Pogue, I have told you time and again-"

"I know, I know, watch the language," Pogue interrupted, which only served to aggravate Taylor even more.

"But you don't know. You don't listen," the Reverend scolded, "Your predecessor had respect for this church and this organization, whereas you have nothing but contempt for everything and everyone around you. For the past three months, you have insisted on continuously disrespecting this church, this organization, and the people who work here. Respect and acceptance are key elements around here, of which you provide neither, therefore, effective immediately, you will no longer be welcome here as anything other than a parishioner. In other words, get out."

Winslow Pogue was shocked, but not by the lecture. The Reverend was infamous among his staff for his lectures. No, what had shocked Pogue was the fact that the old man (which was how he thought of Taylor) had just shit-canned his ass. However, he recovered quickly and retaliated with, "You sanctimonious son of a bitch--"

"Miss Lawrence, call security," Taylor ordered.

"Fuck you," Pogue muttered, and stormed out.

The room had barely quieted down when Janey turned to Reverend Taylor and said, "I'm not sure it matters now sir, but I have those remarks here."

She handed him a couple of slightly crumpled sheets of paper, which he read through. Without looking up from the papers, he asked, "Do you like your job here Miss Lawrence?"

"Yes, sir"

"But you'd like a better one," Taylor continued.

"I didn't-"

Taylor barely gave her time to answer before asking, "Do you think you could handle Pogue's job?"

"Well, sir, I . . . Uh, that is to say-," Janey stammered.

"Yes?"

"I think I could do a better job than he did."

"So do I," Taylor admitted, "not that that's saying much, mind you, but I still think you'd do well."

"Thank you, sir."

"It's settled then. We'll work out the paperwork tomorrow," Taylor said.

"Yes, sir"

"Good," said Taylor, "and Miss Lawrence?"

"Sir?"

"Reorganize your staff this week, weed out the dregs. This reads like a second grade book report," the reverend said, handing the remarks back to Janey, and walked out to the podium.

The lights came up on the podium and the makeshift stage as the Reverend came into view. The crowd erupted with applause. After the applause died down, he thanked them for coming.

He told the how pleased he was that so many people came to the rally. He told them that it was good and righteous of them to have gathered together. He told them that here, together, they can stand in the face of evil and say with honesty and conviction that they are not afraid. He told them that they, as a community and a congregation, will overcome this adversary, this terror, this "COWARDLY MANIAC," and that they will pull together to do so. He told them everything that they need to hear so that they'll believe whatever he says.

The crowd is truly affected by his words. They applaud and cheer him on. They praise him for his honesty and inspiring words. They cry and laugh and smile and plead for more as they feel filled with a sense of completion and oneness and connectedness to the crowd and the reverend and God and everything around them. All of them, that is, but a few on the fringe.

"What a complete crock of shit!"

Marley didn't even realize that she had said it out loud until she noticed the couple of dozen people standing in the next few rows ahead of her. She looked at one particularly scowling and disgusted face which belonged to a middle aged, conservative (and, Marley suspected, sexually frustrated for the last fifteen, no, twenty, years) housewife to whom she said, "What the fuck are you looking at?"

"Honey," John whispered in her ear, "don't aggravate the straights."

Marley turned around in his arms and looked up at him with her best fake baby-doll expression and, with a voice to match, said, "But, baby, it's so fun."

She reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck, and stuffed her entire tongue in his mouth, making a big show of it. She felt the eyes of the house wife burning into the back of her skull, and, as John began to kiss down Marley's neck, Marley turned and looked right at her as she grabbed John's groin. The housewife fumed, then turned away.

"Behave," John whispered.

"I am."

"Oh, for god's sake, just go back to the car and do it already, would you!" Tina exclaimed sarcastically, but not loudly.

Tina wasn't exactly comfortable with public displays of affection, especially John and Marley's kind, especially in this crowd. John and Marley were attracting a lot of attention from the people around them, but why shouldn't they. John was wearing torn blue jeans, combat boots, and a well-worn flannel shirt over a white t-shirt, and had his arms wrapped around Marley who was no less noticeable in tight, black 'Fuck-me' pants, platform combat boots, a black belly shirt, and John's weather-worn biker jacket, her long, wavy, red hair casually tossed to one side. They looked like they were on their way to a rock concert or a biker bar (actually, their next stop after the rally was the pool hall where the four of them hung out regularly), but here they were at a church rally.

In stark contrast, Denny and Tina were going more for 'inconspicuously quiet and respectable', although Tina was the only one pulling it off. Between her neatly pressed khaki slacks, button-down dress shirt, and tan suede jacket, she fit right in with the crowd. Denny, on the other hand, was sticking out almost as much as John and Marley. His overly baggy army fatigue green cargo pants were crumpled and wrinkled, his gray denim button down dress shirt was untucked, unbuttoned, and just as disheveled. Every inch of him cried out 'unkempt', but he didn't notice, and even if everyone else noticed him, he didn't notice them . . . Noticing him.

He was too busy furiously scribbling his impressions of everything around him: the Reverend and his speech; the audience's reaction; the general atmosphere. His ferocity, determination, and obscure shorthand only added to the appearance that he was a man possessed, and in his current environment that had the potential to be dangerous . . . but it wasn't.

No one noticed Denny. Not the people around him, who were all (including the creepy housewife) too wrapped up in listening to the Reverend ping-pong between love-and-hope and fire-and-brimstone. Not John, who, after having seen and recognizing the two detectives from shome he had so narrowly escaped only the previous morning, was now attempting to will himself invisible but failing horribly. Not the woman he loved, who was busy bantering with Marley. Unknown to Denny, however, Marley did notice, and was envious.

Marley had wished, at times, that she could be more like Denny: quiet, unassuming, content to watch life from the fringe, but it just wasn't in her nature. She couldn't help being who she was: outspoken, impassioned, even occasionally abrasive. Of course, she hadn't always felt that way.

When Denny first came to work at the school paper in his freshman year, she really didn't think anything of him. He had been practically invisible to her and the others. Over time, however, John and Tina had both begun to take notice of Denny, but Marley still hadn't. As he became closer to her friends, Marley grew to dislike him, as if he were some sort of parasite invading her territory, and she said so. She couldn't count the number of times she had told Denny outright that she didn't like him, much less all the round-about ways she tried to just generally make him feel like crap, which only increased a couple years later when he started going out with Tina, who had, at the time, been Marley's best friend since their freshman year.

So, it had completely flummoxed her shortly before she and John were about to graduate and leave each other after a six month relationship of mostly sex, sarcastic banter and bickering, Denny burst in on their latest first and verbally bitch-slapped both of them, telling them to just "shut up and accept the fact that they had feelings for each other." She and John were married three months after that, with Denny and Tina beside them, the four of them now all best of friends. After that, Marley had a newfound understanding of why Denny was the way he was, and even though she still occasionally gave him crap about it, now she didn't mean anything by it.

Denny liked it that way. He liked that Marley couldn't help being who she was no more than he could help being who he was, and he liked being who he was. He liked being the fly on the wall, perpetually out of the way, just like tonight.

Marley wasn't the only one wishing to be like Denny. From the moment that he had spotted Jones and Kaldwell arguing just off stage, John was wishing, hoping, and even praying to not be spotted. However, if he had been able to hear what Jones and Kaldwell were arguing about, he wouldn't have been as worried.

"This is abso-fucking-lutely re-Goddamn-diculous!" Jones exclaimed just quietly enough to not be heard by anyone other than Kaldwell.

"Would you just stop complaining already! You sound like an asshole!" Kaldwell whispered back harshly, "We're here for a reason."

"Yeah," Jones groaned, "So the press can see us."

"Fuck you, Jones. You know we're here to see if we can spot anyone matching the description and profile of our girl."

"Oh, come on, Wake up Kaldwell! Look around you! Bloodhounds couldn't find Waldo in this crowd."

"Okay!" Kaldwell erupted, "It's like a needle in a haystack out there. Happy?"

Jones just stood there, huffing and fuming.

"Look, I know it's tedious and annoying," Kaldwell admitted further, "but you're not making it any easier."

Kaldwell paused for a moment, seeing that it looked like Jones had something to say. When she realized that he didn't, she added, "Besides, in all this time that we've been back here arguing, we might have missed spotting someone," without realizing how right she was.

The girl's name was Heather Collinsworth, and would be for only about forty-seven more minutes. At the moment that Jones and Kaldwell were looking completely in the wrong direction, Heather was walking past the rally at the back of the crowd, which was a mistake because, even though they hadn't noticed her, someone else had.

Of course, Heather was completely oblivious. She was just trying to get by the crowd to get home without being noticed; not an easy task for someone who made John and Marley look as though they fit in. She pulled her black trench coat closed to hide the tight black dress with the plunging neckline that clung, stretched or flared in all the right places and tried to step as softly as she could in her heavy black combat boots, hoping her long, flowing blonde hair would, for once, catch no one's eye as it was tossed and tousled about by the same cool night wind that sent chills up her legs through the fashionably torn fishnet stockings.

She ignored the reverend's speech as she passed, discounting it as 'another batch of born-again bullshit'. She walked down a side road in the Minneapolis downtown, the streets notably quiet and empty. She suddenly felt very aware of being alone, so much so, in fact, that the feeling made her stop in her tracks. She peered, stared, and searched out with her eyes in any and every direction, trying to find someone or something, anyone or anything to let her know that she was not alone and safe, but only saw the abyss of the dead, dark, cold Minnesota night staring back at her. She tried to reassure herself, tried to remind herself that it was only a little further and she would be home, but she was still afraid, and she couldn't put her finger on what.

She resigned herself to the fact that she was just being paranoid and tired and needed to get home, and started walking again. But as she walked, she was overcome by the feeling that she was no longer alone, and it scared her even more. The shadows of the poorly-lit street played with her eyes and mind, haunting and taunting her. She walked a bit faster, trying to catch up to her rattled breathing and chasing her heartbeat. Her heart raced, and she raced after it, breaking out in a run, no longer thinking about where she was going, only about getting away from where she was. Finally, her breath caught up to her, and her lungs, almost burning from the effort, forced her to stop in a few stumbling steps.

As the percussive pounding in her chest faded, a new sound took it's place in Heather's ears, deliberately quiet but still growing louder; the unmistakable sound of footsteps. Heather spun around and was surprised to see nothing. No one was behind her or in front of her. But the sound was growing louder, the footsteps were getting closer. The sound bounced off the buildings and echoed all around her, getting louder, closer, with each step.

She needed to run, to get away, but where? It could be anywhere, around any corner, waiting for God-knows-what. She had to chance it, though, had to get safe. Move! she thought, walking in the same direction she'd been running, get home.

As she got closer to the corner, though, the footsteps were still getting louder. She slowed, now only a few feet from the corner, and then stopped. Whoever it was was around that corner, and she knew it. She froze. She locked up. Here she was, now knowing which way not to go, and she couldn't move an inch. She could only listen to the footsteps. They were almost on top of her now. Any second now. And she couldn't move.

But she did move. Ever so slowly, she fell against the building next to her and slid down it into a crumpled ball, eyes wide, breathing shallowly, heart racing, listening. And then the footsteps stopped. And so did Heather's breath.

Heather waited. She waited to hear another step. She waited as long as she could. She waited until her chest stung. She waited until her head pounded. She waited until her whole body shook with each beat of her heart, and then she gasped in a breath loud enough to hear it echo, wishing she hadn't. She wished it again when, in the wake of the echo, she heard a footstep, and then another, and when she saw the shadowy figure of a man emerge from around the corner, and she did the only thing she could; she screamed. She screamed as long and as hard and as loud as she possibly could. She screamed as if her life depended on it, because, for all that she knew, it did. She screamed so intensely that it practically knocked the figure back a couple of feet and on his ass (actually it was the man's shear shock of coming around the corner to be screamed at by some girl crouched in the shadows of the building).

"What the fuck!" the man exclaimed, picking himself up off the ground. He nearly continued with, "What the hell's the matter with you?" when he saw how completely frightened she was, saw how she could barely breath, barely move, and then all he could say was, "My god!"

She never took her eyes off of his. Her eyes were wide and red and locked open. Her breathing was ragged, her heart was weakened, and she was pale and tired and trembling and looked like death warmed over, but not warmed over by much.

"Are you okay?" he asked, then thought, Of course she's not okay, she looks half dead.

He tried to think of a better question, but could only come up with, "Do you need help?"

Her only answer was to look around frightened and tremble some more.

"Okay," the man said, "Look, I'm not gonna just leave you here, it's not safe. The hospital is just up the street. I'll walk you. You'll be safe. Okay?"

Heather nodded slightly. The man took as a "yes", and then helped her to her feet.

"C'mon, let's go."

The man pulled Heather to her feet, who promptly fell back against the wall behind her, her whole world in a whirl wind, her stomach in her throat, and her brain turning inside out. Her head lolled around like it was sitting on a plate of jello, and she collapsed forward into the man's arms. He wrapped one of her arms around his neck to help support her weight, and began walking her back the way she had come from, although she had no idea. She was too busy trying to make the little spots in front of her eyes go away.

They had only gone half a block, when, just as she was starting to feel normal again, the man pulled her into the alley that they were passing, and slammed her up against the wall, pinning her to it with his body. She struggled against him, pushing to try and gain some space between herself and the wall, her arms flailing and swinging wildly. He grabbed her wrists pinned them over her head, and held them there with one hand. She shouted and screamed, and he pushed his mouth hard onto hers, thrusting in his tongue. She did the only thing she could; she bit down as hard as she could.